Volume I Part 7 (1/2)

”Merely born To hunt and vote, and raise the price of corn.”

The Pongo venator is up with the sun, and, if not on horseback, at least he is on the traces of game; sometimes he returns home during the hours of heat, when he knows that the beasts seek the shady shelter of the deepest forests; and, after again enjoying the ”pleasures of the chase,” he disposes of a heavy dinner and ends the day, sleep weighing down his eyelids and his brains singing with liquor. What he did yesterday that he does to-day, and what he does to-day that he shall do to-morrow; his intellectual life is varied only by a visit to town, where he sells his choice skins, drinks a great deal too much rum, and makes the purchases, ammunition and so forth, which are necessary for the full enjoyment of home and country life. At times also he joins a party of friends and seeks some happier hunting ground farther from his campagne.

Meanwhile the women dawdle through the day, superintending their domestic work, look after their children's and their own toilette, tend the fire, attend to the cooking, and smoke consumedly. The idle sit with the men at the doors of their huts; those industriously disposed weave mats, and, whether lazy or not, they never allow their tongues and lungs a moment's rest.

The slaves, male and female, draw water, cut fuel, or go to the distant plantations for yams and bananas; whilst the youngsters romp, play and tease the village idiot--there is one in almost every settlement. Briefly, the day is spent in idleness, except, as has been said, for a short time preceding the rains.

When the sun nears the western horizon, the hunter and the slaves return home, and the housewife, who has been enjoying the ”coolth” squatting on her dwarf stool at her hut-door, and puffing the preparatory pipe,--girds her loins for the evening meal, and makes every one ”look alive.” When the last rays are shedding their rich red glow over the tall black trees which hem in the village, all torpidity disappears from it. The fires are trimmed, and the singing and harping, which were languid during the hot hours, begin with renewed vigour. The following is a specimen of a boating-song:

(Solo.) ”Come, my sweetheart!”

( Chorus.) ”Haste, haste!”

(Solo) 'How many things gives the white man?'

(Chorus chants all that it wants.) (Solo) 'What must be done for the white man?”

(Chorus improvises all his requirements) (Solo) ”How many dangers for the black girl?”

(Chorus) ”Dangers from the black and the white man!”

The evening meal is eaten at 6 P.M. with the setting of the sun, whose regular hours contrast pleasantly with his vagaries in the northern temperates. And Hesperus brings wine as he did of old.

Drinking sets in seriously after dark, and is known by the violent merriment of the men, and the no less violent quarrelling and ”flyting” of the s.e.x which delights in the ”harmony of tongues.” All then retire to their huts, and with chat and song, and peals of uproarious laughter and abundant horseplay, such as throwing minor articles at one another's heads, smoke and drink till 11 P.M. The scene is ”Dovercourt, all speakers and no hearers.” The night is still as the grave. and the mewing of a cat, if there were one, would sound like a tiger's scream.

The mornings and evenings in these plantation-villages would be delightful were it not for what the Brazilians call immundicies.

Sandflies always swarm in places where underwood and tall gra.s.ses exclude the draughts, and the only remedy is clearing the land.

Thus at St. Isabel or Clarence, Fernando Po, where the land-wind or the sea-breeze ever blows, the vicious little wretches are hardly known; on the forested background of mountain they are troublesome as at Nigerian Nufe. The bite burns severely, and presently the skin rises in bosses, lasting for days with a severe itching, which, if unduly resented, may end in inflammatory ulcerations--I can easily understand a man being laid up by their attacks. The animalcules act differently upon different const.i.tutions. While mosquitoes hardly take effect, sand flies have often blinded me for hours by biting the circ.u.morbital parts. The numbers and minuteness of this insect make it formidable. The people flap their naked shoulders with cloths or bushy twigs; Nigerian travellers have tried palm oil but with scant success, and spirits of wine applied to the skin somewhat alleviate the itching but has no prophylactic effect.

Sandflies do not venture into the dark huts, and a ”smudge” keeps them aloof, but the disease is more tolerable than the remedy of inflaming the eyes with acrid smoke and of sitting in a close box, by courtesy termed a room, when the fine pure air makes one pine to be beyond walls. After long endurance in hopes of becoming inoculated with the virus, I was compelled to defend myself with thick gloves, stockings and a muslin veil made fast to the hat and tucked in under the s.h.i.+rt. After sunset the sandflies retire, and the mosquito sounds her hideous trump; as has been said, however, Pongo-land knows how to receive her.

Chapter VII.

Return to the River.

Early on the last morning in March we roused the Kru-men; they were eager as ourselves to leave the ”bush,” and there was no delay in loading and the mission-boat. Forteune, Azizeh, and Asunye were there to bid me G.o.d-speed, and Hotaloya did not fail to supply a fine example of Mpongwe irresolution.

That ”sweet youth” had begged hard during the last week that I would take him to Fernando Po; carpenters were wanted for her Majesty's consulate, and he seemed to jump at the monthly pay of seven dollars--a large sum in these regions. On the night before departure he had asked me for half a sovereign to leave with his wives, and he made me agree to an arrangement that they should receive two dollars per mensem. In the morning I had alluded to the natural sorrow which his better semi-halves must feel, although the absence of groaning and weeping was very suspicious, and I had asked in a friendly way, ”Them woman he make bob too much?”

”Ye', sar,” he replied with a full heart, ”he cry too much.”

When the last batch had disappeared with the last box I walked up to him, and said, ”Now, Andrews, you take hat, we go Gaboon.”

Hotaloya at once a.s.sumed the maudlin expression and insipid ricanement of the Hindu charged with ”Sharm ki bat” (something shameful).

”Please, mas'r, I no can go--Nanny Po he be too far--I no look my fader (the villain had three), them boy he say I no look 'um again!”

The wives had won the day, and words would have been vain. He promised hard to get leave from his papa and ”grand-pap,” and to join me after a last farewell at the Plateau. His face gave the lie direct to his speech, and his little man?uvre for keeping the earnest-money failed ign.o.bly.

The swift brown stream carried us at full speed. ”Captain Merrick” pointed out sundry short cuts, but my brain now refused to admit as truth a word coming from a Mpongwe. We pa.s.sed some bateaux pecheurs, saw sundry shoals of fish furrowing the water, and after two hours we were b.u.mping on the rocks outlying Mombe Creek and Nenga Oga village. The pa.s.sage of the estuary was now a pleasure, and though we grounded upon the shallows of ”Voileliay Bay,” the Kru-men soon lifted the heavy boat; the wind was fair, the tide was ebbing, and the strong current was in our favour. We reached Gla.s.s Town before midday, and after five hours, covering some twenty-two direct geographical miles, I found myself with pleasure under the grateful shade of the Factory. It need hardly be described, as it is the usual ”bungalow” of the West African sh.o.r.e.

Twelve days had been expended upon 120 miles, but I did not regret the loss. A beautiful bit of country had been added to my mental Pinacothek, and I had satisfied my mind to a certain extent upon that quaestio, then vexata, the ”Gorilla Book.” Even before my trip the ethnological part appeared to me trustworthy, and, if not original, at any rate borrowed from the best sources.

My journey a.s.sured me, from the specimen narrowly scrutinized, that both country and people are on the whole correctly described. The dates, however, are all in confusion: in the preface to the second edition, ”October, 1859,” became ”October, 1858,” and we are told that the excursions were transposed for the simple purpose of taking the reader from north to south. As in the case of most African travels, when instruments are not used, the distances must be reduced: in chapter xii. the Shekyani villages are placed sixty miles due east of Sanga-Tanga; whereas the map shows twenty. Mr. W. Wimvood Reade declares that the Apingi country, the ultima Thule of the explorer, is distant from Ngumbi ”four foot-days' journey;” as MM. de Compiegne and Marche have shown, the tribe in question extends far and wide. Others have a.s.serted that seventy-five miles formed the maximum distance. But many of M. du Chaillu's disputed distances have been proved tolerably correct by MM. Serval and Griffon du Bellay, who were sent by the French government in 1862 to survey the Ogobe. A second French expedition followed shortly afterwards, under the charge of MM. Labigot and Touchard; and finally that of 1873, like all preceding it, failed to find any serious deviation from fact.