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CONGO LIFE AND FOLKLORE

Photo] A NATIVE VILLAGE. [Rev. R. H. Kirkland

THE MAIN PATH ON WATHEN STATION.
(Note the “Welcome” Banner.)

CONGO LIFE
AND FOLKLORE

Part I

LIFE ON THE CONGO

AS DESCRIBED BY A BRASS ROD

Part II

THIRTY-THREE NATIVE STORIES

AS TOLD ROUND THE EVENING FIRES

BY THE

REV. JOHN H. WEEKS

(BAPTIST MISSIONARY SOCIETY)

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON

THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY

4 BOUVERIE STREET; & 65 ST. PAUL’S CHURCHYARD, E.C.

1911

TO

MY COLLEAGUES, LIVING AND DEAD

WHOSE ARDUOUS LABOURS AND FAITHFUL LIVES HAVE

REDOUNDED TO THE GLORY OF CHRIST, AND

TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF HIS KINGDOM IN CONGOLAND

AND TO

THOSE CO-WORKERS IN THE HOME-LAND

WHOSE GENEROSITY, PRAYERS AND KINDLY WORDS HAVE

SUPPORTED, STRENGTHENED AND ENCOURAGED

THEM ALL THESE YEARS, THIS BOOK

IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED

PREFACE

A brass rod is the money of by far the larger number of the people on the Lower and Upper Congo. In thickness it is not quite so stout as an ordinary slate pencil, and varies now in length, according to the tribe using it, from five inches long on the Lower Congo to an indefinite length among the more distant tribes of Congo’s hinterland. Originally the brass wire was employed on the Congo for purposes of ornamentation, either of the person in the form of necklets, armlets, and anklets, or of articles they greatly prized and wished to decorate. It was beaten into ribbons and wound round the hafts of their favourite spears, paddles, and knives which were only used on gala days; or the wire was melted down, and, with much skill, made into personal ornaments. I have seen brass necklets weighing twenty-eight pounds, and have taken from a woman’s legs brass rings that weighed in the aggregate nearly sixty pounds. It is probable that at first this brass wire changed hands in lengths of several fathoms, and gradually pieces of a certain length were sold at a fixed value, and thus it became in due time the article of common exchange--the currency, the money of the country.

For a considerable time the writer has been interested in the folklore and anthropology of the people, and has made long and careful notes on such subjects, and some of this information he has worked into the story. For obvious reasons much must be left unwritten[^[1]] in a popular book; but that which finds a place in the following pages can be accepted as perfectly trustworthy and true to Congo life. The missionary and other experiences are founded on fact, the views and prejudices of the natives are faithfully pourtrayed and are not exaggerated, and the native superstitions have, as shown here, resulted in innumerable cases of murder by ordeal, and the killing off of the most progressive natives, possessors of inventive genius, of irrepressible energy and of great skill--the best men, who would have been the leaders of their people and would have left them more advanced than they found them but for the witch-doctor and the ordeal.

By writing under the guise of a Brass Rod, worn first round the neck of one owner and then round the arm of another, the writer has had more scope, and he hopes has been able to make the scenes from life more realistic than he could have done by the ordinary method. And the reader will find that the book deals much more largely with the people of the country--their habits, customs, views of life and superstitions--than with the scenery.

The book has been written during the intervals of deputational work; and its object is to lay clearly before the reader the ingrained prejudices, the curious views, the tremendous and all-pervading superstitions, and the mighty forces that have been arrayed against the introduction of Christianity into that benighted land, and how, in spite of such forces against it, the evangel of Jesus Christ has triumphed more wonderfully than our poor faith and often blundering efforts have deserved.

It is hoped that superintendents, Sunday-school teachers, leaders of Christian Endeavours and of missionary prayer-meetings may find that the reading aloud of some of these chapters will awaken in their scholars and hearers a deeper sympathy with missionary work, and that ministers and teachers will discover in the stories told around the Congo fire, which form the second part of this volume, new nails upon which to hang old truths.

John H. Weeks.

Baptist Mission House,

19 Furnival Street, Holborn.

CONTENTS

The following Stories will be found in Part I

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PART I
Life on the Congo
AS DESCRIBED BY A BRASS ROD

THE BRASS ROD
[The currency of the Country]

LIFE ON THE CONGO

Chapter I
En Route to Congo

I am packed in a box--Sent to Congoland--My journey on the ocean steamer--Curious names of the Kroo boys--Landed at Banana--Thrown on the deck of a river steamer.

I am much older than you think, for it is more than twenty-five years ago since I was born in a great factory in one of your English towns. The years that have passed since my birthday have been filled with joy and sorrow, rest and toil; but in looking back over them I think they have contained more sorrow and toil than rest and joy.

When I was born I was very tall--nearly thirty inches high; but instead of growing taller I have become shorter, being only[^[2]] eleven inches long now, for my enemies have cut off one little piece after another to melt down for brass ornaments. Folk think more of finery than of honesty. I must not, however, anticipate my sorrows, for they came all too soon.

Soon after I was born I was put with many other brass rods into a dark box, and nailed in very tightly; for I heard one of the workmen say that I was to take a very long journey over sea and land. There was fortunately a hole in my box, and looking I saw that we were first put on a train, and then carried into the hold of a big ship. Soon after we were all packed carefully and tightly in the hold, the steamer began to move, and we could hear the creaking of the rigging and the rattling of the racing engines, and feel the pitching and rolling of the great steamer itself.

I felt very glad when the pitching and rolling stopped, and the cover was taken from the hold, and the beautiful sunshine came streaming in, making the rats scurry off with their young to dark corners and cracks.

Just then we heard the bang of a cannon and the shrill scream of a whistle; and, wondering what was going to happen next, we heard the babble of many voices, and the patter of naked feet along the deck; and a voice shouted; “There, our gang is complete. We don’t want any more, and the sooner you others get over the side into your canoes, the better for your health.”

I heard an old palm-oil barrel who had taken this journey many times remark to a new one: “We are now off the Kroo Coast, West Africa, and have taken on Kroo boys[^[3]] to work the cargo and keep the decks clean. That bang of the cannon was to call them, and the whistle was to hurry them.”

I do not know how many Kroo boys we engaged; but they were very noisy, and gave us many a sleepless night. At four o’clock in the morning, while we were at sea, they began to rub the decks with stones and scrape the ironwork with knives, talking incessantly all the time; but when we were in port it was worse, for they not only worked the winches right over our heads from early morn till late at night, but they came down into the hold, turned us over and pitched us about so that if I had not had a good wooden box round me I should have been badly bent and bruised. Some of my friends were smashed to pieces, and some bales I knew received deep gashes in their sides, and others I never saw again.

It was a sad journey, full of partings, for those Kroo boys never came into our hold without tying up some of my friends, and we saw them for a moment hoisted into the air, and over the side they went, into what?--I knew later, but not then.

What curious names those Kroo boys had! Some of them still linger in my memory, such as: Peasoup, Teacup, Bottle-of-Beer, Brass-pan, Top-hat, Kettle, Arm-chair, Pen-and-ink, Kiss-me-quick, Flower-vase, Napoleon-Buonaparte, and Duke-of-Wellington.[^[4]] I learned afterwards that the reason why they had these names was that their white masters, not being able to pronounce their proper country names when they first engaged them, gave them any name that happened to come into their heads at the moment, and such names stuck to them all the days of their service on the coast. It was amusing to hear these names called, or, when one was asked his name, to hear him answer: “Me, massa, me be Bottle-of-Beer.”

The Kroo boys good-humouredly retaliated by giving their masters names that picturesquely described any peculiarities they observed in them. One they called Big-nose, another Skinny-legs, another Long-legs, and a fourth Bald-head. There was more appropriateness in the names they gave their masters than the names they received from them.

About seven weeks after we started my box was tied with others, hoisted into the air, and thrown over the side of the ship into a big boat, and we were rowed ashore and landed at Banana. As we were going a Kroo boy spied me through my peephole, and tried hard to drag me out of my comfortable resting-place; but I clung tightly to the others, and thus successfully resisted his attempts to steal me. I soon found myself in a large store filled with huge piles of boxes, bales, and crates, and long rows of large bottles filled with rum and other fiery waters.

After a few days a white man came into our store, and, sorting out a large number of cases, bales and bottles, sent them away on the heads and shoulders of Kroo boys. For two days they were carrying out loads as quickly as they could, and just as I was thinking that I should not be disturbed a Kroo boy came and lifted my box in his strong arms, and, carrying me across the busy, sunlit yard, threw me with much force on the deck of a steamer, and I became unconscious.

Chapter II
My Journey up the Congo

Our captain and tyrant--River scenes--We camp at a trading-station--Native riddles.

When my senses returned I found my box was piled on deck with many other boxes like it, and thus I had a fine view. The sun was rising, flooding the river with its brightness, lighting up the distant hills and throwing into sombre shadow the mangrove trees that lined the banks. There was much hustling and shouting on board as the ropes were cast loose; and I soon began to feel the throb of the engines, and hear the rush of the water as the small steamer pushed its way against the strong current that was hurrying the mighty volume of the Congo to the sea.

On reaching mid-channel I could see that the trading-houses of Banana were built on a narrow tongue of sand, having on one side the Atlantic Ocean constantly rolling and sometimes madly rushing as though it desired to tear the very tongue out of the mouth of the river; and on the other side the gentle lap, lap of a back current of the river itself.

The Congo is said to be fifteen miles wide at the mouth--from hills to hills; but it does not look so wide because of the islands and mangrove swamps that hinder a clear view of the whole width, and narrow one’s vision to the channel in which you are steaming.

From my position I had an easy view of the deck of our small steamer. There were only two white men on board--a captain and an engineer; the former was a short man, who never spoke without swearing, and never gave an order without punching or kicking one of the black crew. He had a large rubicund nose, hideously coloured by frequent applications to the bottles that were always on his table. He was privately nicknamed by his crew as Red-nose, and was thoroughly feared and hated by them all. Many of them were slaves and could not get away from him, and others had contracted for one or two years’ service, and if they ran away they would have lost their pay; but notwithstanding this some did escape, preferring loss of pay to constant brutal treatment.

The current was too strong to remain long in mid-channel, so the steamer went near to the bank and pushed and fought its way, with much rattling, throbbing and panting, from point to point of the various bays. When the water was too swift to be conquered at one place, the steamer, snorting with defeat, crossed the channel and worked its way up-river on the other side.

There was not much to be seen--no hippopotami, no crocodiles, and very few natives in canoes, and only an occasional trading-station on low-lying, swampy land surrounded by palm-trees, plantain groves and vegetable gardens. Here and there men were to be seen fishing with large oval nets. They stood on the rocks by which the water rushed tumbling and foaming in its hurry to reach the sea, and dipped in their nets with the mouths up-stream, and, pulling up the whitebait thus caught, laid them on the rocks to dry. Others made small fences by the river’s bank about eighteen inches apart and three feet long, and into these they put small scoop-shaped nets, and drew up the small fish that had passed between the fences.

By sunset we reached a trading-station belonging to my owners. Our steamer was quickly tied to the bank, and all made secure for the night. The men soon had some fires lighted along the beach, and saucepans of food boiling on them, and pieces of meat roasting in the ashes. Groups gathered round the fires, and after a hearty meal of rice, ship-biscuits and meat, they became very talkative, and soon started asking riddles. Some of these riddles I still remember after all these changeful years; and I will try to tell you a few of them.

A Loango man named Tati seemed to know most riddles,[^[5]] and he was called upon to make a start. After much persuasion he asked: “What is this? The stick is very little; but it has a number of leaves on it.” One after another attempted to give the answer, but as they all failed, Tati said: “The answer is--Market, because it is a small place, but has a lot of people on it.” They chuckled with delight over the neatness of the riddle, and demanded Tati to give them another.

Tati sat in a brown study for a few minutes, and then, looking up, said: “There were five buffaloes; but only four tracks.” Semo, who was Tati’s rival in this game, instantly cried out: “Fingers” as the answer, because while there are five fingers on a hand there are only four tracks, i. e. spaces between them.

Semo was then asked to give one, and without a moment’s thought he cried out: “My father’s fowls laid their eggs under the leaves.” All kinds of guesses were made; but at last admitting their failure, Semo said: “Peanuts,” and of course they all saw it at once--peanuts grow under the ground beneath their own leaves.

Semo was called upon for another riddle, and after a short pause he said: “I went to a strange town, and they gave me one-legged fowls to eat.” This one also was too difficult for them to guess, and after many attempts Semo had to give the answer, viz. Mushrooms, which have only one stalk (i. e. one leg) on which to stand.

Soon after this the talk became general, and gradually died away as one by one they rolled themselves in their mats and went to sleep, leaving the fires brightly burning to throw out warmth to the sleepers and to frighten away hippopotami, crocodiles and sundry other creatures. During the night the snorting of hippopotami could be heard as they gambolled in the shallow water near the bank; and occasionally the switch of a crocodile became audible as it hurried by in search of food for its cruel but never-satiated jaws; many noises also came from the dark forest just beyond the settlement, that filled the night with weirdness and made the first glow of dawn welcome to men, birds and beasts.

A CONGO HUT.

THE LOWER CONGO RIVER ABOUT 90 MILES FROM THE SEA.

Just as the sun peeped above the eastern horizon bells began to ring, and the whole station awoke to life. My friends, the crew, hurriedly came from their mats, and were soon carrying bales, boxes and bottles ashore, under the directions of a white man, and in an hour or so all the goods for that station were discharged, and the steamer was pushing its nose against the strong current of brown, oily-looking water to the next up-river station.

The higher we ascended the river the narrower it became, and the more powerful was the rush of water on its ever-scurrying way to the sea. Whirlpools opened up at the most unexpected places, making the steamer roll and pitch, and straining the engines until they panted and groaned in their never-ceasing struggle with the giant current. Twice we were twisted round in a place called the Devil’s Cauldron and carried down-river, but at the third attempt the giant was conquered, and an hour or so later we were tied up to a wharf at the highest point on the Lower River.

Just below us the river narrows between steep hills to a mile and a quarter in width, and through that funnel more than twenty thousand miles of rivers empty themselves into the “cauldron” which constantly seethes, bubbles and boils with the rush of water tearing over its rough, rocky bottom.

Chapter III
My Overland Journey Begins

The white man’s fetish--I am exchanged with others for rubber and ivory--My new companions express freely their opinions about the white men--Why the white men are on the Congo--Native suspicions and prejudices.

The morning after the steamer arrived all the goods were taken ashore, put into a huge store, and arranged in their places. Just opposite the store door was a large image, gaudily coloured and grotesquely ugly. It was a fetish[^[6]] that the white man had bought of a native “medicine man,” and had placed it there in the store to frighten the natives and deter them from stealing. Of course it was no use, for the natives knew that no “medicine man” would sell a real fetish to the white man, consequently it did not overawe them, nor keep them from thieving when they had the opportunity.

I had not been in the store many days when the box in which I was packed was carried out and handed over to some natives who had brought some tusks of ivory and rubber to the white trader for sale. From what I heard it had taken them a long time to settle the price; but directly that had been agreed upon they quickly selected their goods, viz. forty pieces of assorted cloth, ten barrels of gunpowder, fifteen flintlock guns, one box of brass rods, two demijohns or large bottles of rum, five cases of gin, and some common looking-glasses, knives, beads and various other trinkets.

I was carried, with the other trade goods, to the native sleeping-quarters, and found my new owners were not tall men, but wiry, lithe, strong fellows, who, after they had bound us with ropes in long baskets, commenced their tedious overland journey to their town far in the interior. Before sunset we had crossed the hills, descended the valley, and forded by means of a canoe the Mposo river. The boys of the party collected wood and fetched water, and very soon bright cheerful fires were blazing, and the camp resounded with much chatter and laughter.

Most of the talk was about white men and their strange ways. One laughed at them for having such a silly fetish in their store. “Why, I know,” said he, “the ‘medicine man’ who made it; and he told me himself that he had put no strong charms in it, as he was not going to hurt his own people for any white man; but the foolish white man gave plenty of cloth and gunpowder for it.”

Another asked if they knew Fomu,[^[7]] a white man who lived in the next district? “Well, he put a weight under his scale, and cheated us for a long time; but we found him out, and at first we would not trade with him again, until some one found a way to punish him for defrauding us.”

“What did you do?” asked another.

“Well,” answered the first, “we procured some bananas and coated them with rubber, and sold them to him as solid rubber; and it was a long time before he discovered it, and then we had to cut every lump of rubber into pieces; but I think we recovered what he stole from us.” There was a hearty and good-humoured laugh over this playing off of one trick against another.

Just then an old man with a long plaited beard chimed in: “Yes,” he said, “I had a friend who lived in a part of the country where, instead of using brass rods as we do, they use strings of blue pipe beads as money--a hundred beads on each string. One day my friend sold some ivory to a trader there, and received some packets of beads as part payment; but when he arrived home he found that instead of there being one hundred beads on each string there were only sixty. He was cheated out of forty beads on every string, and before he could pass them on the markets he had to make them up to the proper number.

“After that no native would deal with that trader unless he gave two strings of beads in the place of one, so he lost in trying to cheat us.

“Pish!” exclaimed the old man, “the white men are cheats! They put heavy pieces of iron under their scales to rob us; they put lumps of stuff in their measures to rob us; they give beads in short numbers to rob us; when we work for them they beat us just before our term is finished so that we may run away without our pay, and when we have carried loads for them they often pretend we have stolen from them so as to have an excuse for not paying us.”

The old man had worked himself into a rage as he recalled wrong after wrong; but his voice was drowned in a burst of laughter that came from a group sitting round another fire. “What are you laughing at?” he shouted aggressively.

“Not at you, father,” respectfully answered one of the young men. “We are laughing at what we heard yesterday: A trader had treated his house boys, his people, and his customers very badly for some time, so some of them met together one evening, went to his house, and stripping him of his clothes, they carried him into the bush, and rubbed him well with cow-itch, and then let him go. He had a very bad time; but he has been better to his people since that night.”

There was much snapping of fingers and chuckling over this joke played on the white man.

“For what purpose does the white man buy rubber and ivory?” asked one of the boys of the old man with the plaited beard.

“I don’t know,” replied the old man. “When I was a boy we made pestles and trumpets of the ivory, and drumstick knobs with the rubber; but I think the white man only buys rubber and ivory to hide the real reason of his presence in our country.”

“What is that?” asked the lad.

“Well,” said the old man, with a knowing look in his black eyes, “the white man does not like the work of making cloth, hence they come to this country to buy up all the bodies of those who die to send to their country to make cloth for them. They preserve the bodies in their stores until there is a good opportunity of sending them away in their steamers; and when these bodies reach Mputu (the white man’s country) the spirits are forced to return to them by the magic of their great ‘medicine men,’ and then they are compelled to work for them as their slaves.

“The white men have very strong magic, surpassing the magic of our people; but if the white men were not here, very few, if any, of our people would die. Why, a friend of mine told me all about it the other day. He said: ‘In the sea there is a hole,[^[8]] and the white man goes in his steamer to this hole and rings a bell, and the water sprites push up the end of a piece of cloth, and the white man pulls on it one day, two days, three days, until he has enough cloth, and then he cuts it off and measures it into pieces, and binds it into the bales, as we see in their stores. But before he leaves the hole he throws into it some bodies he has bought in our country.’ Yes, the white men are very wicked, and don’t you have anything to do with them. Why, all your relatives who have died are now, perhaps, slaves in Mputu, and some day you may be the same.”

A thrill of horror went through the gaping crowd as the old man in graphic language and with dramatic gestures told these things. When he had gained his breath he began again.

“The other day I heard of some exceedingly wicked white men who pretend to tell people about God, white men who will give you medicine if you ask for it, and will teach you in a school how to read and write, and will even take you into their houses and clothe and feed you. Beware of those white men, for they are only trying to secure you, and you will soon die and become their slaves in Mputu. The other white men say: ‘We have come for rubber and ivory,’ and we receive plenty of trade goods from them in return for our rubbish; but these very wicked ones say: ‘We have only come to tell you about the great God, and to help you.’ They are more crafty, cunning and wicked than the others. Keep away from them always, or you will quickly die!”

By the time the old man had finished there was a large circle of horror-stricken natives around him, who, with many a cry of rage and hatred against such evil doings, promised never to go near such wicked wretches as these white men were, and with many an oath they threatened they would kill them if ever they had the opportunity.

Soon after this the fires were replenished, and men and boys curled themselves in their mats and cloths, and went to sleep dreaming of the cruel wickedness of white men. And all through the night the river went gliding by to the great Congo and on to the sea to lose itself in the waters of the Atlantic; and it took no warning to the white men who were leaving home, friends, and family to tell such as those who slept on its banks of the great and good God.

Chapter IV
We reach the Town of my Owner

Crossing the Mpalabala hills--The head man knocks his toes--It is an evil omen--He visits the “medicine man”--Finds his brother dying--Last hours of the dying chief.

The next morning was dull and damp--a weeping morning, and every one shivered with the cold as they hastily picked up their loads and prepared for the steep ascent that would take them over a spur of the Mpalabala mountains. The road was a narrow track, steep and stony; huge boulders were often in the path, and had to be climbed over or avoided by detours, thus making the way difficult and tiring. By ten o’clock the sun was shining brilliantly on the white stones, making the eyes ache with their glare and the body perspire with their reflected heat. The men panted beneath their burdens from the heat, and water was very scarce.

By midday we had passed the steep and wearisome hills of Mpalabala and were camped in the valley by a pleasant stream.

Just before arriving at the resting-place the head trader unfortunately struck his toes against a stone, and, being very superstitious, he was filled with horror at the evil omen. It was the general subject of conversation as to what this omen predicted. One thought that a wife of the head trader was dead; another suggested that his house and goods were destroyed by fire; and thus they prophesied one evil after another until Satu--the poor fellow who had struck his toes--could hardly rest at the midday halt; and he certainly put on a very woebegone appearance, for he had no doubt some great misfortune had befallen him or was about to happen to him. This fear so played on his mind that he had disturbed sleep and bad dreams that night; and often started out of a nightmare screaming that his sister or his wife was dead, or his house was burnt to the ground.

The next day a large town was reached, and Satu sought out the “medicine man” there, who was famous through all the countryside for the wonderful power of his fetish, and the charms he made from it. Satu told him how he had struck his toes against a stone, and his fear of the evil omen, and asked the wizard to avert the evil. Some of his companions laughed[^[9]] at him for wasting his money over such nonsense, while others, who were more superstitious, advised him to fee the wizard well, and thus enlist his power to stave off the threatened mischief.

This particular “medicine man” had a charm which was called Kimbaji-mbaji (meaning, to-morrow), and any person who came under its protection could not be harmed because he who wanted to hurt him always put off the carrying out of his evil intentions until to-morrow, and, as you know, to-morrow never comes. The special charm used by this wizard was a shell full of various herbs which had been pounded, mixed and rammed into it.

The troubled man took a fowl to the wizard, who killed it and poured some of its blood into the shell, which he then placed on the ground, surrounding it with eight little heaps of gunpowder. After dancing about them for a short time, and chanting an incantation over them, he exploded the powder and blew his whistle vigorously. These ceremonies aroused the charm to work effectively in the postponement of the evil spells that were being used against the man. The wizard received twenty brass rods as his fee; and Satu went on his journey satisfied that the omen could not now work against him.

Satu, however, found on his arrival home that the wizard’s power was ineffectual in his case, for his brother, the chief of the town, was very ill and nigh unto death. Hence their arrival, instead of being acclaimed with the loud shouting of women and children, and the firing of many guns, was greeted with the solemn headshakes of the men, the crying of the women, and the beating of drums by the “medicine men.”

The patient was apparently so bad that as a last resort they had called all the “medicine men” of the district together in the hope that their combined force would rescue the man from the malignant influence of the evil spirit--the ndoki that was killing him. All night long they had been drumming, shouting, beating gongs, and parading about the town calling on the evil spirit to desist, but without avail, for the chief was now dying, and Satu had only just arrived in time to receive his brother’s last wishes about his property and the names of those who owed him money, and slaves.

All the goods brought from the coast were piled in the chief’s house so that he might gloat with dying eyes on his increased wealth, and curse in strong, passionate language the ndoki who was causing his death.

From my fortunate spy-hole I could with ease view the weird scene. It was a small hut built of grass and sticks tied neatly and securely together. There were two doors, but no windows, and the smoke escaped as best it could through crevices in the walls and roof.

In the far corner, lighted by the flickering flame of the wood fire, was the chief, lying on a bamboo bed covered with a papyrus mat, and squatting on the floor were numerous women--the hut was crowded with them--loudly talking, and freely giving their advice on the best way of curing the patient. Some suggested one particular charm, others argued in favour of certain rites and ceremonies; but all were angry with the witch (ndoki) who was regarded as the cause of all the mischief; and they were unanimous in their demand that the witch should be discovered, tried by the ordeal, and killed.

In the early hours of the morning the chief died. The female members of his family, old and young, set up a howl of rage and grief--rage because the witch had killed their chief, grief because their relative was dead. The men fired off their guns to frighten away evil spirits, to give expression to their sorrow, and to inform the spirits in the great, mysterious forest town, whence all the souls of the dead go, that a great man was coming to join them.

Upon Satu rested the responsibility of the funeral, and every detail had to be scrupulously observed, or the spirit of the deceased would trouble them as a family, and perhaps cause their extinction.

Chapter V
A Funeral Orgy

Satu becomes chief--Preparations for the funeral feast--My box is opened--I become a neck ornament--Bakula, my new owner, is smart, but superstitious--The mourners assemble and present their gifts--The toilet before eating--Drunkenness and quarrelling--Corpse is carried to the grave--A white man wants to steal the ivory trumpets--He is shaved and sent about his business.

As the deceased chief was a very great man it was necessary to postpone his burial for a month or two until fitting arrangements for a grand funeral could be conveniently made, otherwise his spirit would not be satisfied, and trouble would follow.[^[10]] Moreover, if the chief had been hurriedly buried like an ordinary man, the whole countryside would have accused the family of meanness and selfishness in wanting to keep the dead man’s wealth for themselves. Therefore the body was dried, wrapped in a cloth and placed in a hut built for the purpose.

Satu sent to all the markets day after day for miles round, buying up every goat, sheep and pig that was offered for sale. Having collected a large number of animals he then began to send out invitations to the funeral ceremonies. It was decided that on the eighth nkandu[^[11]] market day the rites should begin. All messengers sent to chiefs with an invitation had to take with them one or two goats, according to the chief’s importance, “to feed them and their followers on the journey” to the mourning town.

At the commencement of these preparations my box, in which I had travelled so far, was opened, and I should have been sent with many other brass rods to the markets in exchange for goats or pigs; but a lad took a fancy to me, and begged to give an old brass rod in my place. My new master, whose name was Bakula, turned over my two ends, and, hooking them together, he wore me round his neck as an ornament, and as he polished me brightly every day I was well able to see all that happened about me.

My new owner was a free-born lad of high spirits, alertness and agility, quick at all games, successful in all kinds of sports; but like many of his seniors, held the women and girls in great contempt except when he wanted a favour, and then he could cajole and flatter them until their eyes sparkled with pleasure and they became his slaves. He was, however, very superstitious, had many charms tied about his person, and regarded the “medicine men” with great awe and admiration. Bakula quite believed that his success in hunting, his smartness at games, and his general good fortune were entirely due to his charms and the regularity with which he made sacrifices to them.

The appointed day for the funeral was drawing nigh, so the preparations were pushed on apace. Large quantities of cassava flour[^[12]] were prepared and an immense number of kwanga[^[13]] loaves were bought at the different markets, and demijohns and calabashes of palm-wine were ordered for the three days’ feasting that were to precede the interment.

The eventful day at last dawned, and during the morning and early afternoon chiefs with retinues of wives, followers and slaves were constantly arriving. They came from all quarters and entered the town by all the roads leading to it. Bakula seemed to be ubiquitous, for he greeted most of the chiefs as they entered the town, and led them to where Satu was sitting in state to receive his guests. Those of humble origin knelt before Satu and paid homage to him; those of exalted position received homage from him; and those who were his equals sat down on a mat, and solemnly, they and Satu, clapped their hands at each other.

Every chief, head man, and invited guest brought a gift of cloth “to wind round the corpse,” and as soon as the salutations were over the cloth was presented, piece by piece, to Satu. The present was supposed to be in proportion to the giver’s social position. A chief who on account of his importance had received two goats with his invitation would be expected to give three times the value of the goats in cloth, and if he fell short of this he was considered mean; but if he went beyond it he was regarded as a generous, wealthy man, and his name would be in the mouths of all the mourners, and he could strut about puffed out with pride.

This cloth, though given ostensibly “to wind round the dead chief,” was really used to defray the expenses of the feast; and happy was the family which had no crushing debt left at the close of such festivities. Satu carefully noted the value of every gift, and although he could not write, yet at the close of the day he could have told from his well-trained memory the number and quality of every piece of cloth given by any chief.

Nearly three hundred people had gathered to the funeral, either by direct invitation, or in attendance on their husbands, their chiefs, or their masters. It was just at the beginning of the dry season, consequently all the cooking and eating was done in the open streets; and those who could not find a house in which to sleep considered it no hardship to spread their mats and sleep in front of the houses.

Soon after sunset the ordinary folk gathered round the fires watching the women cooking, while the chiefs and head men sat in groups gravely talking local politics or loudly boasting of their prowess in bygone hunts and fights. No cloths were laid for the feast, and no tables were set and decorated. Everything was in primitive style. Their fingers were all the cutlery they possessed, and their loin-cloths were substitutes for serviettes.

Just before the food was served boys and girls went round with calabashes of water, and each guest took a large mouthful, with which he washed his hands, mouth and teeth in the following manner: Having taken a large mouthful of water, the operator ejected some of it from his mouth in a gentle stream on to his hands, which he washed quickly and vigorously. With the remainder of the water he cleaned his teeth by putting the index finger of his right and left hand alternately into his mouth and rubbing them; then, throwing the residue of the water about in his mouth to rinse it, he spat it out. Lastly, drying his hands on his loin-cloth or on a bark cloth, he completed his toilet preparations for dinner.

It was an amusing sight to see scores of men sitting on their haunches and gravely squirting water on their hands. The puffed cheeks, filled with water; the intent looks, and the care shown to aim the jets of water straight so as not to waste any, made a humorous picture on my mind. How simple and how effectual was the operation! I found that this habit of washing hands, teeth and mouth not only preceded each principal meal, but was also repeated after the meal, and largely accounts for the beautiful, healthy teeth possessed by the natives.

By now the food was cooked, and the women were turning it out into every kind of receptacle they could find--wooden dishes, tin plates, baskets, saucepans and washhand basins were all requisitioned. The guests broke up into groups of from six to ten persons; and each group received a large vessel of smoking vegetables, and another of steaming meat and gravy.

At once the fingers were dipped in, and he who could bolt his food the quickest got the largest share of what was going.[^[14]] Vessel after vessel was emptied, and stomachs visibly distended in the process; but at last operations became slower and died away in grunts of satisfaction.

I noticed that the men and boys ate by themselves, and the women and girls by themselves. In fact, it was considered beneath his dignity for a man to eat with a woman; and boys of ten would receive their portion from their mothers and go and eat it with the men. As a rule the women had what was left by the men, or what they could successfully hide from them. During meals little or nothing was said, as each diner thought eating was more important than talking.

At the close of the feast the old men sat in groups talking and drinking palm-wine. Now and again voices were raised in angry quarrels; for as wine entered, prudence retreated; grievances and jealousies were remembered, revived and wrangled over again, and some of them had to be forcibly restrained from fighting.

The younger men and women, hearing the drums resounding with their rhythmical beating, went off to dance in the moonlight, and the drinking and dancing continued far into the night; pandemonium reigned, law and order were forgotten, and the stars looked down that night on a town that had changed into a pig-sty.

These orgies lasted three nights. Through the day the men lounged about, sleeping in the shade; the women did no work, but simply gathered firewood and water for cooking the evening feasts. During the day no regular meals were taken, but the folk ate bananas, or roasted plantain, or a few peanuts, or stayed their hunger on sugar-canes--all, by fasting, were preparing for the night’s feasting.

On the evening of the fourth day, just at sunset, the corpse was carried to the grave for burial. The bearers took it first round the town, and pretended that the corpse was reluctant to leave the town so they had to struggle with it to the burial place, and there they buried it with its feet to the setting sun, and its head towards the east.

As the corpse was carried by the houses of the principal men they came out to greet it, and fire their guns in a parting salute to their late chief; and after that farewell from the town the funeral guns were loaded and fired in quick succession to inform the spirits in the great, mysterious forest town that an important man was coming.

The Lower Congo natives always buried at sunset for this reason: During the daytime their own towns are deserted, because the women and girls go to the farms and do not return until the afternoon; and the men and boys go to hunt or fish, or work in the forest, or trade on the markets, and do not return until the evening. Hence the old, the sick and the children only are left in the town; consequently any one arriving during that time would find few, if any, to greet them; but if the traveller reaches a town between five and six o’clock the folk will have returned from their various occupations, and at every step he will be greeted by the people. They think that the great forest town of spirits is conducted in the same way, and to ensure a welcome to the deceased they bury him just before sunset with much firing of guns, blowing of ivory trumpets, and beating of their drums.

Just as the burial rites were completed a white man, a State officer, arrived. He was greeted, and a house was cleared out, swept and given to him for the night. The white man walked freely about the town that evening and enjoyed the hospitality of the people. He watched the dances, listened to the native band composed of ivory trumpets and various drums, and was free to go and come as he pleased. In the morning he repaid their hospitality by demanding the ivory trumpets from them.

This unreasonable request the natives refused to obey; a fracas ensued followed by a scuffle, during which the officer was securely tied.

One party of the natives wanted to kill him and pour his blood on the grave of their buried chief; but another, and stronger, party resisted this extremity, wishing only to punish him for trying to enforce an unjust demand. Finally it was decided to shave the man’s head, beard, moustache and eyebrows and send him off.

When the officer’s head and face had been reduced to the smoothness of a billiard ball--native shaving is not a gentle process--he was allowed to proceed on his way a sadder, and, perhaps, a wiser man. I heard that ever after that encounter with the natives he heartily and thoroughly abused them to his compatriots, but he carefully left out of the account his attempt to steal their ivory trumpets.

The Congos have a proverb that runs thus: In a court of fowls the cockroach never wins his case; i. e. the verdict of one race against another is to be received with caution.

Chapter VI
Our Town Life

Streets are irregular--Houses small and draughty--Their reception, dining, and drawing rooms are in the open air--Their many charms and fetishes--Routine of the day--Bakula tells a story: “How the Sparrow set the Elephant and the Crocodile to pull against each other”--Tumbu, a slave, relates the tale of “The Four Fools”--And Bakula tells: “How the Squirrel won a Verdict for the Gazelle.”

As soon as the funeral festivities were over, our many visitors returned to their towns and villages, and I soon became interested in the normal life of the natives. Our town was not very large, and its houses were not in regular streets. A person would build to suit his own convenience, and in walking from one side of the town to the other you were obliged to wind in and out among the houses. As a rule there was plenty of space between the huts, but here and there they were crowded together and surrounded by grass fences. These enclosed places belonged to the chief and his head men.

The houses were built with grass walls and roofs, all the work being very neatly done. When new they were rain-proof, but very draughty. The walls were only four feet six inches high, and the ridge-pole was about seven feet above the ground. The people cooked their food, ate it, and sat outside their houses. In the open air they held their receptions, their social meetings, their palavers, their courts of justice, and every other town and domestic function. The houses were simply for sleeping, for storing their goods, and for sitting in on cold, windy, stormy days. There was no privacy about the native manner of living, but everybody knew everything about everybody else, and a little more besides.

A great number of charms and fetishes were to be found in the town, and it seemed as though they had a charm for every imaginable circumstance of life. One man possessed a charm to protect his goods, and another had a charm to help him steal successfully; one owned a charm to bring him good luck in trading, and another wore a charm to aid him in cheating on the markets the folk with whom he traded. One man whom I saw had a charm to render him invisible that he might, unseen, hear conversations, and enter forbidden places to his own advantage; and many had bought charms to keep evil spirits from jumping down their throats.

My owner, Bakula, wore many charms about his person. One maintained him in good health, another helped him in hunting, a third made him a favourite with the women and girls, and a fourth brought him good luck in his trading transactions with the other folk in the town. On the appearance of every new moon, Bakula would at sunset catch a chicken, and, cutting its toe, drop a little blood on each of his charms to keep them in good humour, or otherwise they would not act on his behalf.

Every morning soon after sunrise the women and girls went to work on the farms, carrying with them their hoes, baskets and babies; and then the men and boys went to the bush and forests to hunt for game, to tap the palm-trees for wine, or to gather materials for house building and repairing. Others went to the markets with their pigs, goats, fowls, saucepans, native woven cloth, or any other article they had for sale, or desired to exchange for some needed goods.

Towards the middle of the afternoon the women and girls returned laden with food, firewood and water, and at once set about the preparations for the evening meal--the principal one of the day. Then later came the men and boys firing guns in their jubilation, if they had been successful in the hunt, and the female population would rush out shouting vociferously their congratulations to the hunters, and passing remarks on the bush pig or antelope being carried into the town ignominiously on a pole between two or more bearers. The other men arrived from the markets with the results of the day’s trading, or from the forests with the building materials they had collected.

At five o’clock the inhabitants would all be back, and the town would be very lively--the children laughing and playing at their various games; the men lounging about reciting, with more or less boasting inaccuracy, their doings during the day, and awaiting with keen appetites the evening meal. Over all the noises of the village would be heard the angry voices of the women quarrelling; but as such disturbances were of daily occurrence among the women, very few took any notice of them, except to put in an occasional word to incite the women to greater efforts with their tongues.

Soon after sundown the food was ready, and the women turning it out into baskets and wooden platters, carried it to their husbands, hiding a portion for themselves. If you, my reader, had walked through the town then you would have seen the head of each family, together with his sons, male visitors, and friends, sitting around the vessels containing their food, helping themselves with their fingers, their hands and mouths having already been washed. At some little distance the women and girls would be eating their portions, for they were regarded as inferior creatures, entirely unfit to eat with the men, so they ate in a half-shamefaced, apologetic fashion out of sight of their lords and masters.

As you stood looking at them one of the boys would ask you to have a piece of his pudding, and if you accepted the invitation and took a piece you would find it stick to your teeth like toffee.

“Ah!” the lad would laughingly say, “that is not the way to eat our pudding (luku).[^[15]] This is the proper way.” And he would pull off a piece, roll it in his fingers, dip it in some soup, and opening his mouth let it roll down his throat without any chewing; afterwards remarking, with a twinkle in his eye: “You white boys may be very clever, but you certainly do not know how to eat pudding.”

It was quite dark by the time the meal was finished, and the numerous fires flared and flickered before the houses, lending an air of cheerfulness to the scene. The elders gathered around the fire in front of the chief’s house, and discussed the politics of the day with much earnestness and eloquence. The lads were allowed to stand silently around, listening; and while my owner, Bakula, was there, a pompous man made a long, wearisome speech, in which he showed that he thought more of himself than his hearers thought of him.

The speech was full of bombastic platitudes and boastful words, so the chief at last pointed at him, saying: “Here is a little fowl trying to lay a big egg.” Such was the effect of this proverb that the pompous man collapsed, whilst his audience chuckled and shook their sides with laughter. And amid the laughter Bakula ran off, and we soon joined a group of young folk who were telling stories round the fire.

Bakula was received with shouts of delight, for he was a merry lad, and appeared to have among them the reputation for telling good stories. Hence he was soon called upon for one, and in a lively, pleasant manner, and with much dramatic force, he gave them the following account of

“How the Sparrow set the Elephant and the Crocodile to pull against each other.”

“While the elephant was searching for food one day he happened to pass near a sparrow’s nest, and accidentally knocking against the branch, nearly threw the eggs to the ground. The sparrow thereupon said to the elephant--

“‘You walk very proudly, and not looking where you are going, you nearly upset my nest. If you come this way again I will tie you up.’

“‘Truly you are a little bird,’ the elephant laughingly replied, ‘and are you able to tie up me--an elephant?’ ‘Indeed,’ the sparrow answered him, ‘if you come this way to-morrow, I will bind you.’

“‘All right,’ said the elephant, ‘I will now pass on, and will come back here to-morrow to look upon the strength of a sparrow.’ So the elephant went his way and the sparrow flew off to bathe in a neighbouring river.

“On reaching the river and finding a crocodile asleep at her favourite bathing-place, the sparrow said: ‘Wake up! this is my bathing-place, and if you come here again I will tie you up.’

“‘Can a little sparrow like you tie up a crocodile?’ the crocodile asked her.

“‘It is true what I tell you,’ retorted the sparrow, ‘and if you return here to-morrow I will fasten you up.’

“‘Very well,’ replied the crocodile, ‘I will come to-morrow to see what you can do.’ And with that the crocodile floated away, and the sparrow returned to her nest.

“The next day the sparrow, seeing the elephant coming, said to him: ‘Yesterday I told you not to come this way again, because you endangered my nest. Now I will tie you, as I warned you.’

“‘All right,’ said the elephant, ‘I want to see what a little thing like you can do.’

“The sparrow then brought a strong vine rope, put it round the neck of the elephant, and said to him: ‘Wait a moment while I go and have a drink of water, and then you will see how strong I am.’ To which the elephant replied: ‘Go and drink plenty of water, for to-day I want to see what a sparrow can do.’ So the sparrow went and found the crocodile basking in the sun on the river’s bank.

“‘Oh! you are here again,’ she said, ‘I will tie you up as I warned you yesterday, because you do not listen to what you are told.’ ‘Very well,’ sneered the crocodile, ‘come and tie me up and I will see what strength you have.’

“The sparrow took the end of the rope and tied it round the crocodile, and said: ‘Wait a moment, I will go a little higher up the hill and pull.’ So away she flew up the hill on to a tree, and from there she called out: ‘Pull elephant, pull crocodile. It is I, the sparrow.’ So the elephant pulled and the crocodile pulled, and each thought he was pulling against the sparrow; not knowing they were pulling against each other. All the day long they pulled, until the evening, but neither out-pulled the other. And during the whole day the sparrow was crying out: ‘Pull, elephant, you have the strength; pull harder, elephant.’ And in the same way she addressed the crocodile.

“At last the crocodile said: ‘Friend sparrow, I cannot pull any more, come and unfasten me, and I will never come to your bathing-place again.’ ‘Wait a little while,’ said the sparrow, ‘I am going up to my village.’ And the elephant said, as she drew near: ‘Now I know you are very strong. Please come and undo me, and I will never come again to shake your nest.’ So the sparrow loosened the elephant and then went and removed the rope from the crocodile’s neck; and from that time the sparrow has never been troubled by either the elephant or the crocodile.”

At the close of this story there were many comments on the ’cuteness of the sparrow, and some sage remarks. One little fellow said that, although the sparrow was small, she had more wit and sense than either the big crocodile or the bigger elephant. Therefore we should not despise people because they are small.

They begged Bakula to tell them another story; but he said he could not remember another just then. They, however, pleaded with him, and at last he said: “If Tumbu will now tell one of his stories, I will try and recall one of mine by the time he has finished.” Tumbu, who was sitting at the back, was pushed forward to a place in the centre, near the fire; and as the light from the fire fell on him, it revealed a sad face lit with large, intelligent, but pathetic, eyes.

I knew the boy and his sad story. He was a slave who, in a time of famine in his district a few years ago, had been sold by his parents for a few roots of cassava, and he was forced from his mother, his village acquaintances, and brought to this strange town. The boys and girls twitted him with being a slave, and to make matters worse they taunted him with the miserable price that had been paid for him.

His sensitive spirit brooded in his loneliness over the insults poured upon him, and the marks of his deep sorrows were seen on his sad face. He shrank from the gaze of the many eyes that were now fixed upon him; but Bakula had been kind to him, and had often defended him, and he was ready to bear anything for his hero. Therefore in a glad, shy manner he related the following adventure, called

“The Story of the Four Fools.”

“A wizard out walking one day met a boy crying bitterly. He asked him the reason of his tears, and the boy said: ‘I have lost my father’s parrot, and if you can find it I will pay you well.’ So the wizard called a hunter, a carpenter, and a thief, and told them about the loss and the reward, and they decided to search for the parrot.

“‘Before starting let us show our skill,’ said one of the four. ‘You, thief, go and steal an egg from that fowl without its knowledge.’ The thief went and stole the egg, and the fowl did not move. The hunter put up the egg as a mark, went a long distance off and proved his skill by hitting the egg. After which the carpenter showed his cleverness by putting the egg together again. Then they turned to the wizard for him to give a proof of his smartness, and after a little time he said: ‘The parrot has been stolen by the people in that vessel.’

“All four entered their glass ship[^[16]] and after a time caught up to the vessel. The thief went on board, and waved his charm, then he took the parrot, laid the table, and had a good feast; and when he had finished eating he picked up the parrot and returned to his glass ship.

“When the people in the vessel found the parrot gone, they gave chase to the glass ship. The captain of the vessel sent down the rain and it broke the glass ship, but the carpenter mended it, and the hunter fired at the rain and killed it. The captain sent the lightning and it broke the ship, but the carpenter mended it again, and the hunter fired at the lightning and killed it. So they eventually reached the land and took the parrot to the chief’s son, and said: ‘Here is your father’s parrot.’

“The lad was so glad to receive it that he told them to select what they liked from his wealth, ‘even to the wonderful fowl which lays beads, or anything else you desire.’[^[17]] They chose the fowl and went their way, but they had not gone very far before the wizard said: ‘It is my fowl, for I told you where the parrot was.’ The thief said: ‘No, it is mine, for I stole the parrot from the vessel.’ And the carpenter also claimed it, as he had twice mended the broken ship. Moreover, the hunter said: ‘Of course it is mine, for I killed the rain and the lightning.’ Thus they argued long and angrily, and as they could not agree, they at last did a thing that was amazingly stupid. They killed the wonderful fowl, and divided it into four pieces, each taking his share. Now who out of these four foolish ones should have had the fowl?”

This story excited a great amount of discussion. Some argued that this one should have had the fowl, and others argued with much gesticulation that another should have taken the fowl. Each character had his supporters; but all agreed that they were four fools not to let the fowl lay plenty of beads and share them.

Bakula was now asked again to give his promised story; and he told them--

“How the Squirrel won a Verdict for the Gazelle.”

“When the leopard and the gazelle were living in the same town each of them bought a goat--the leopard a male and the gazelle a female. One night the gazelle’s goat gave birth to two kids, and the leopard, being very greedy, went and stole the two kids from the gazelle’s goat and put them with his own goat.

“In the morning the leopard called the gazelle and said to him: ‘My goat has given birth to two kids.’ The gazelle was very much surprised at hearing this, as male goats do not have kids, and he told the leopard so; but the leopard said: ‘All right, you don’t believe me. We will call the judges and hear what they say.’ So they carried the case to the court of animals, who acted as judges, and they said: ‘The kids belong to the leopard’s goat.’ For they were very much afraid of the leopard, and thought that if they gave the verdict against him he would kill them.

“The gazelle went and told the squirrel all his troubles and how he was cheated out of his kids. ‘To-morrow morning,’ said the squirrel, ‘put a rope across your town for me to run on.’ So the next morning the gazelle put a rope right by the leopard’s house and courtyard, which were full of the folk who had judged the case in favour of the leopard. And by and by the squirrel came running along the rope at a great rate.

“‘Where are you going so quickly,’ asked the leopard, ‘that you cannot rest a little?’ ‘I am in a hurry to fetch my mother,’ said the squirrel, ‘for my father has just given birth to twins.’

“‘Ah! ah!’ laughed the leopard; ‘can a man give birth to a child?’

“‘Can a male goat give birth to kids?’ retorted the squirrel. Whereat the leopard was so angry and felt so much ashamed of himself, that he went right away from the town and never returned, for fear of the animals laughing at him. And the gazelle carried the kids back to his own goat.”

When this story ended appreciative remarks were made on the wit of the squirrel, and contempt was poured on the clumsy leopard who so foolishly threw away the verdict given in his favour.

By this time the moon, full and beautiful, was riding high in the sky, flooding the village with its soft, silvery light, so Bakula proposed a dance.

Up jumped the boys and girls from the different fires; drums were carried out to an open space, seed rattles were tied round the ankles and wrists of some of the dancers, and very soon the rhythmic tap, tap of the drums were heard and answered by the clap, clap of the dancers’ hands as they formed two lines--one of girls, and the other of lads, and began a dance that only ended in the early morning, and when the performers were thoroughly exhausted with their exertions.

Chapter VII
The Search for the Witch

People believe their chief died by witchcraft--They send for the witch-finder--His arrival and antics--The ceremony of discovering the witch--Satu’s brother, Mavakala, is accused--Why was Mavakala accused?--He takes the ordeal--Proves his innocence--Other tests are forced on him--He is done to death.

During the illness of the deceased chief there was a widespread feeling in the town that some one was bewitching him, and that therefore the “medicine men” were unable to cure him. At last one of their wizards stated plainly that a witch was at work destroying their best efforts; and although they tried charms to ward off, and threats to frighten, the witch from pursuing his (or her) wicked purpose, yet their patient continued to grow worse, and at last died. And now that their chief was buried the people demanded that a proper witch-finder should be engaged to seek out the witch.

A great witch-finder was called from a distant town, and on his arrival I noticed that he was a small, active man with keen piercing eyes that seemed to jump from face to face and read the very thoughts of those who stood around.

He was dressed in the soft skins of monkeys and bush-cats; around his neck was a necklace of rats’ teeth mixed with the teeth of crocodiles and leopards. His body was decorated with pigments of different colours; thick circles of white surrounded the eyes, a patch of red ran across the forehead, broad stripes of yellow chased each other down the cheeks, bands of red and yellow went up the arms and across the chest, and spots of blue promiscuously filled in the vacant spaces. At the different points of his curious dress were bells that tinkled at every movement. The boys looked at him in deep awe, the girls and women cowered away from him, and the men, though they feared him, greeted him with a simulated friendliness that ill-accorded with their nervousness.

The witch-finder (or N gang’ a N gombo) was supposed to find his own way to the town and home of his client; for how could they believe in a man’s occult power to discover a witch if he had not the ability to walk straight, without being shown, to the house of his employer.

To meet this difficulty the witch-finder had one or two apprentices, among whose duties it was to question cautiously the messenger, and to obtain from him all the needed information about the town, house, circumstances attending the death of the person, and the relations of the townspeople to one another. If the messenger would not, or could not, give the required knowledge, then the assistant accompanied him back to his town, and, as he went, he dropped at the cross-roads twigs or leaves to guide his master--the witch-finder--right up to the house of his client.

The assistant ferreted out the quarrels of the family employing his master, and their animosities towards each other, or towards one of their number. In every family there is to be found at least one who is the object of the suspicion, jealousy or hatred of the family--the unpopular member; and all the information thus gathered is secretly told to the witch-finder and the disliked person pointed out to him.

On the appointed day a great crowd gathered. No member of the clan was absent, except those on trading expeditions. The assembled people formed a great circle, into the middle of which the witch-finder danced and chanted to the beat of the drums. It was a hot day and the sun poured down its scorching rays on the performer, making him perspire so profusely that the various colours on his face and body ran into each other, adding grotesqueness to his ugliness.

As he pranced and danced up and down the circle he put question after question, and was answered by the people with ndungu,[^[18]] or otuama,[^[19]] as he guessed wrongly or rightly about the dead man’s ways.

Presently he elicited the fact that the deceased had had a very bad quarrel with some one, and then he discovered that it was with a man in the town. By crafty questions the witch-doctor narrowed the circle of examination, the people, all excitement, really helping him though quite unaware that they did so; and at last, in a fandango of whirling skins and rotating arms and legs, he brought himself to a standstill in front of one of the men, and accused him of being the person who had bewitched the late chief to death.

It was the unpopular man, Satu’s brother, who was thus publicly declared the witch, and the whole crowd was astonished that they had never thought of him before as the monster who used witchcraft to do his own brother to death.

Immediately on the declaration there was a tremendous hubbub of voices; insults were heaped on the accused, he was jostled about, weapons were raised threateningly, and each tried to outvie his neighbour in abusing the denounced man as a proof of his own guiltlessness.

Amidst the mêlée the accused protested his own innocence, and demanding to take the ordeal, he ran for his gun[^[20]] to shoot the witch-finder who had, by his false accusation, brought all this trouble on him. But the crafty nganga had received his large fee, and was already well on his way back to his own town. None doubted the bona fides of the nganga except Mavakala, the accused man; and how could he prove his guiltlessness except by voluntarily taking the ordeal.

What had Mavakala done to draw such an accusation upon himself? On his brother’s death he had cried as long and as loudly as any of them; he had neglected his person, worn old clothes, dressed his hair in mourning fashion, gone unwashed, and had carefully observed all the usual ceremonies of “crying” for a near relative, and yet they charged him with bewitching his brother to death. Yes, all his neighbours recalled these facts, but they interpreted them now in the light of this serious charge. Of course, he had observed all these rites simply to deceive them. He must have thought them fools to be duped by his proofs and protestations. No, he must take the ordeal, and that quickly, and the ordeal-giver must be sent for immediately. The whole of Mavakala’s family was alienated from him, for was he not accused of the most heinous crime of which a human being can be guilty--witchcraft?

What had Mavakala done to render himself so fatally unpopular? That evening the declaration of the witch-finder was discussed round all the fires, and as Bakula went from group to group I picked up many items of the indictment.

Mavakala was an energetic, successful trader, and from each trading journey he came back the richer for his enterprise. They were jealous of his wealth; but among themselves they whispered that his increased riches were really due to witchcraft and not to his ability; and were not their suspicions justified, for was he not now accused of selling his brother’s corpse to the white traders?

I heard, too, that Mavakala was a skilled blacksmith, and had made good knives out of odd pieces of hoop iron taken from old cases, and bought, by him, from traders on the river; and had even made hoes and axes out of old bale iron. Many other clever things he had done, all of which were now by these superstitious people accepted as proofs of his witchcraft. He had awakened their jealousy by his energy and smartness in business; his skill and ingenuity in smithing had aroused their suspicions, and his prosperity had provoked their hatred. In any other country his ability would have been admired and honoured, but on the Congo it was a sign of witchcraft, and always ended in death by the ordeal.

It was then I understood the reason for the backwardness of these people. They destroy their leaders and their best men, and the only hope of the people is deliverance from the curse of the witch-doctors.

The next day the ordeal-giver (or ngol’a nkasa) arrived, bringing with him the ordeal bark which he had procured from the nkasa tree in the following manner. This tree is supposed to have a spirit; hence, when they are about to cut some of its bark for ordeal purposes, they address it in these words: “I come to take a piece of your bark, and if the man for whom it is intended is a witch, let my machet bend when I strike you; but if he is not a witch, let my machet enter into you, and let the wind stop blowing.” The machet had bent under the blow, and the omen being against Mavakala the ordeal-giver made his preparations with smug satisfaction.

Mavakala, accompanied by many of the men and lads of the town, was led to the bare top of a neighbouring hill, where a rough shanty of palm fronds was built. The accused was pushed into this, and told to stretch out his arms, and not to touch anything. The ordeal-giver pushed a stone towards the poor wretch, with twenty-seven pieces of nkasa bark on it; and then he ground each piece of bark and slowly fed Mavakala with the powders.

During the process the accused man vomited three times, and should therefore have been set free and carried back to the town with shouts of honour; but was not the omen against him? and besides, was he not obnoxious to his jealous and superstitious neighbours?

Consequently, when the ordeal-giver proposed that further tests should be applied, there were none to lift up their voices in protest against the injustice of continuing the cruelty.

Mavakala was dazed with the narcotic effects of the drug that had been forced on him, and his wits were dulled and muddled. He was taken with rough hands from the temporary hut and made to stand by himself, a swaying, lonely, pathetic figure--a type of all those who have been persecuted or have laid down their lives for the sole crime of being in the vanguard of their generation.

While Mavakala stood swaying there, six twigs in rapid succession were thrown at his feet, and he as quickly had to name the trees to which they belonged. This he did successfully, and then he was told to name the birds and butterflies that were sailing by. Again he unerringly gave each its proper name; but now, just when he wanted his eyes to be at their keenest, he could feel them becoming blurred with the dregs of the drug he had been forced to take. His tormentors called on him to name the ants crawling at his feet. He faltered, stammered confusedly, and in stooping, that his poor, hazy eyes might have a better chance to recognize them, he fell, with a moaning cry, to the ground.

In an instant the heartless, superstitious crowd was on him; sticks and machets, knives and guns, soon did their work on the poor mangled body. None was too poor or mean to kick his carcass and spit in his face, and his bruised, gory corpse was left unburied upon the bare hill-top--a feast for the beasts of the forests and the birds of the air.

By and by the stars peeped out, half ashamed to look on a world where such tragedies were enacted, and as they looked they saw that thing there upon the bare hill-top. It was covered with wounds, and every wound had a tongue that cried to its God, and to their God: “How long, how long, shall darkness cover the land, and gross darkness the people?”

Chapter VIII
Visitors Arrive

The dulness and pettiness of native life--Arrival of two visitors--Bakula questions them about the white man--They relate the little they know about him--Old Plaited-Beard stirs the people up against the white man--They exchange their views about him--They agree to oppose him--The white man is seen approaching--He is driven from the town and has to sleep in the bush.

The excitement of the funeral festivities, and of the hunt for and murder of the witch had passed away, leaving a deadly dulness on the town. The men suspiciously snarled at one another, and the women quarrelled with monotonous regularity. Their lives were petty, mean, and there was not enough dignity in a whole village to supply one man. For generations they had lived on a low level, with their eyes, thoughts, and hearts on the ground, and apparently the art of looking into the infinite spaces of God above and around them had been lost in their animalism.

Daily the women went to the farms, or to the markets to barter their produce; and the men went to the forests, to the markets, or to the hunt.

THE BEGINNING OF THE SCHOOL AT NKABA.

But one evening the town was set agog with the news that a white man was visiting the various villages, and would soon arrive in their town. The men who brought this news had much to tell about the coming visitor, for he had spent two or three days in their village. They were the “lions” of the evening, and their only regret was that they had not larger stomachs to accept comfortably all the invitations to the evening meals that poured in on them.

The visitors had come to transact business with the chief; consequently Satu’s fire was the centre that evening of a large and interested gathering. Men and lads crowded near the chief and visitors, while the women and girls hovered about the outskirts of the circle picking up such scraps of information as filtered through to them.

My owner, Bakula, was there, and put the first question, or rather series of questions: Who is this white man? What is he like? Where does he come from? What is he doing in this country? And Bakula stopped not because his curiosity was exhausted, but from sheer lack of breath.

Bakula had put into words what all were longing to know, so they sat quietly, while one of the visitors said: “We don’t know who this white man is. He is not one of the traders whom we have seen at Mboma,[^[21]] for he is new to these parts, but he speaks our language very well, though at times he makes stupidly amusing mistakes. His carriers say that he comes from Congo dia Ngunga[^[22]]--the king’s town away south. He will not sell us things like a trader, for he only barters for food for himself and carriers, and not for ivory or slaves. He offers to give us medicine, but we are afraid to take it, for who knows but it may bewitch us to death. He has invited some of our boys to his school, and has promised to teach them to read and write, and also how to make doors, windows and bricks, like white men. He even promised to clothe and feed them; but we shall not let any of them go. What we cannot understand is this: Why should the white man take all this trouble? Why should he offer to feed and clothe our children, to teach them, and to give us medicine?”

“I know why they do all these things,” shouted the old man with the plaited beard. “They want to bewitch you; they desire to take your spirits away, and then they will buy up your bodies and send them to their own country to turn, by their great magic, into slaves. You know what I told you on the road;” and with angry, burning words and vehement gestures he repeated to the whole crowd what he had told the few around the fire the first night I spent among them; and then, with foaming lips and glinting eyes, he cried: “This is the kind of white man against whom I warned you. If he comes here let us kill him.”

The women clapped their hands in horror of the wicked white man, and held their children tightly to them, and the men shifted nervously in their seats, and loosened the knives in their belts.

If, at that moment, the white man had walked into the town he would have been murdered, and his mutilated body thrown into the bush.

It was some time before they had so quieted as to continue their interrogations of the visitors. “Well, you have not told us what this white man is like,” called a voice from the back of the crowd.

“No, I have not,” replied the visitor, “because Tata stopped our talk with his horrible charges against the white men. This man who is coming is a white man, and you have all seen white men. This one is neither short nor tall, he has no beard, but he has tin saucepans to cook his food in, and a funny thing called a frying-pan, which always makes a lot of noise when it is put on the fire. He is a dirty white man, for the two days he was in our village he never washed more than his hands and face, and he smells just like all the other white men.”[^[23]] And the speaker and others held their noses with expressions of exaggerated disgust.

“I do not think he is dirty,” chimed in one of the listeners. “When I was last at the coast I asked one of the white man’s boys if his master was dirty, and he said: ‘No, he takes a bath every day in his house.’ You see this white man is travelling, and has no bath-house with him, and consequently in front of you he only washes his hands and face.“

“Oh, is that it? Perhaps you are right,” answered the visitor in an unconvinced voice.

“I will tell you something else,” continued the first speaker. “Once when I was at the coast I was talking to one of the interpreters there about this very matter--the smell emitted by white men; and he said: ‘They give off a bad odour, I know, but one day I heard one of the white traders say: “Those wretched niggers do stink badly!”’ So after all it may be that we smell as badly to them as they do to us, therefore we must not complain.”

The man with the plaited beard eyed the speaker for a few moments in angry contempt, and then he burst out at him in such a tirade that I feared his words would choke him.

“You dog,” he cried, “you witch, are you in the pay of the white man that you should thus speak for him? You white man,[^[24]] you bewitched our chief to death; not Mavakala, I always said he was innocent and he vomited the ordeal three times, yet they would kill him; but you are the witch; you sold our chief’s spirit to these cursed white men, and now he is slaving for them, and we shall all die through your witchcraft and greed.”

By the time the old man had finished his invectives the two chief actors in this scene were standing by themselves in a circle of anxious, terror-stricken faces. They were types of the old order and the new--the old order, slaves to witch-doctors, charms and superstitions that demanded the continuance of things as they are; the new order, men and lads upon whose minds new ideas were dawning and struggling for the mastery against their crude, superstitious fears,--men who were yearning for they knew not what, and were restless through strange strivings in their hearts.

There, flooded by the glorious, soft moonlight, stood the two men glaring at each other. Murder was in their hearts, and their hands were on their knives. A few moments more and the pent-up feelings of the surging crowd would have burst their strained barriers and much blood would have been shed, for each had his adherents, when Satu, the chief, stepped between the two men.

He was still dressed in mourning for his brother, and the thick coating of oil and soot on his face--a sign of his sorrow, had not yet been removed. He was a superstitious man and much travelled, a man in whose soul what-he-had-seen was struggling with his ignorant, superstitious fears.

In a few calm words he poured oil on the turbulent passions of his people. He scouted the idea that because a man related what he had seen and heard that therefore he was a witch; and he soothed the old man by promising to oppose the white man.

There was no more talk that night about the coming white man, for very soon after Satu uttered the above diplomatic words the people separated, and went either to whisper their fears to each other around their own fires, or to spread their mats for sleep. Several times during that night women woke from horrid dreams, screaming that the white man had stolen their children, or was trying to throttle the souls out of them.[^[25]] In the morning as the women went to the farms they related to each other the dreams of the previous night, but instead of regarding them as nightmares caused by the exciting events of the preceding evening, they were taken as undeniable proofs of the devilish designs of the white men to carry out the awful predictions of the old man with the plaited beard.

A few evenings after these happenings the much-talked-about Mundele wa N zambi (or white man of God) was seen descending the hill on the other side of our valley. The women, screaming, snatched up their children and fled; the men beat some loud sounding notes of alarm on the drums; and then, picking up their guns, machets, knives, sticks, and any weapon to hand, went hurriedly to bar the entrance to their town. We saw the white man hesitate, stand still a moment, and then come on slowly and deliberately. He evidently knew the meaning of those excited thuds on the drum and the screams of the women.

Bakula, with a heavy stick in his hand--how he longed to have a gun so as to have a shot at those cruel white men!--ran with the men to the road by which the white man must come. As we hurried forward we could hear the men discussing what was to be done. Some were for killing the white man at once, but the majority said: “No, we will hear what he has to say. We will smell out his wickedness first, and then if there is cause we will help you to kill him.” Satu said: “We will neither hear him, nor kill him; but send him back the way he has come.”

The white man was now mounting the hill. It was a narrow, difficult, rough track that led to our town. He was panting by reason of the steepness of the ascent; and seemed utterly wearied with his long journey. He saw the ugly demonstration in front of him; he heard the yells and screams of rage and defiance; but he came quietly on--a lonely man to a surging torrent of wild, uncontrollable passions. His carriers and boys hung back, for they were overawed by the threatening aspect of the crowd.

As he drew near the white man held out his hand as a sign of his friendship; but Bakula, filled with the terrible stories he had heard about white men, struck at the proffered hand, and missed it in his blind rage.

Then arose a babble of curses, contradictory shouts, and threats to kill him if he did not go back. They hustled him about like a battledore. They tore his clothes; but he was so mixed up with them that they could neither use guns nor machets without great risks to their friends, and he was not worth that. When their fury had somewhat spent itself, the undaunted white man calmly asked them for permission to sleep in their town.

“No, we don’t want you,” the people screamed.

“I have only come to do you good,” he said.

“No, you have not, you have come to bewitch us to death,” they shouted.

“If I wanted to bewitch you to death I should have brought guns and soldiers, but you see I have neither. I want to speak to you about the great and good God Who sent His Son into the world to tell you of His love, and to save you,” was his quiet reply.

“You are a cunning, crafty witch. We want neither you, nor your goodness, nor your talk about God, therefore go away,” they cried.

“It is nearly dark, and the next town is a long, long way, and my people and I are very tired. Let me sleep here outside your town!” he pleaded.

“No, not here,” they said. “It is too close to us; go and sleep by the stream in the forest.”

“It is cold and damp there, and plenty of fever and mosquitoes are in that place. Let us sleep here, we shall not harm you!” he smilingly said.

“No, not here. Down there is good enough for a witch. Keep the fevers and mosquitoes away with your magic,” they sneeringly retorted.

Sadly and wearily the white man retraced his steps, and as he went down the hill he called his carriers and boys, and that night they put up some waterproof sheets to serve as a tent to protect them from the heavy dews and dripping trees.

Well, it might have been worse, and through his God-given calmness the white man had come out of a very difficult and dangerous position with only a few rents in his clothes and a few bruises on his body. We heard many things about the white man next morning when his boys came up to the town to buy some food from the people.

All through that night the natives in the town danced around their fetishes to keep them alert in protecting them from the white man’s devilry: drums were beaten and gongs sounded to frighten the evil spirits away; and guns were occasionally fired to warn off witches, and the lonely white man down in his camp, as he heard the various sounds, prayed: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do,” and especially did he pray for the lad who struck at his outstretched hand.

Chapter IX
Some Customs, Games, and a Journey

The luck-giver is called to bring prosperity on the town--His mode of procedure--Satu and some of his people go on a visit to a great chief--Good and bad omens--The game at “Antelope”--Bakula narrates a story: “How the Fox saved the Frog’s Life”--Another lad tells why inquiry should come before anger--The difficult road--Bakula and his friends dress themselves--Their mixed wardrobes.

Satu, the chief, wished to have a healthy and prosperous town, and his people were one with him in this laudable desire. Now the only way they knew of obtaining their object was to send for the luck-giver (or, ngang’a zumbi), who possessed a bag of charms consisting of pieces of the skins of various animals and reptiles, bits of herbs, and powders concocted of indescribable messes. These were supposed, when properly used, to impart good health to a town, good luck in breeding animals, and prosperity in trade. The people clubbed their moneys together, for, as all were to share in the good fortune to be conferred by the charm, all were expected to give towards its expenses; and as the benefits would be large the cost would also be proportionately great.

I had observed that people who owned little fetishes and expected small benefits only from them made small offerings to them, such as a little blood from the foot of a frog, or from the toe of a chicken that cost them nothing. Those who wanted larger boons killed fowls and poured their blood over their fetishes; and those who wished for greater advantages sacrificed goats every month--their expectations were in proportion to their sacrifices.

The fee having been collected, the luck-giver was called. He was a wizen-faced, withered man with small, crafty, shiftless eyes. His appearance seemed to belie his cornucopian office; but, perhaps, he could give to others the good fortune that he had apparently failed to procure for himself.

On his arrival he very carefully selected a hard wood log and cut a hole in it, and into this hole he put bits of all the articles from his bag so as to make the log an effective charm. A hole was dug in the ground on the outskirts of the town by the side of the road along which the women passed when fetching water from the stream. A goat was then killed and the head put in the hole, and the fetish stick erected on it--this was supposed to preserve the post from the attacks of the white ants,--and then the blood from the slain goat was poured over the charms in the post; and over the hole containing the charms was tied a piece of palm-tree gossamer, which also was drenched with the goat’s blood. Earth was rammed round the stick, and the fetish was now completed, and ready to work.

But there was one prohibition that the luck-giver said must be scrupulously observed: nothing tied in a bundle could be brought into the town, or the charm would become ineffective, and its luck-giving power destroyed. Women returning with firewood must untie their bundles before reaching the fetish; men with bundles of thatching-grass must take off the bands; carriers with loads must either loosen all the cords, or make a wide detour to avoid the town; and the people must remove their girdles and belts.

This was a very cunning prohibition, for, if the town had good health, the animals bred well, and the trade prospered, then the luck-giver received all the credit for making such a wonderful charm; but if no good results followed the expense and trouble of setting up such a costly fetish, then some one had broken the taboo and nullified the luck-giving properties of the fetish post.

As the luck-giver was there Satu and some of the head men thought they would invest in a luck charm for their own private use. My owner, Bakula, longed to speculate in one, and he counted his little store of savings, but found that he had not near enough for the fee, etc.

The necessary arrangements having been made and the fee paid, Satu and the head men selected strong, young cocks and carried them to the luck-giver, who took out of his bag of charms a small portion of each and pounded them carefully into a well-mixed paste, and a little of this “medicine” he gave to each cock, and thereupon they became the very embodiment of luck and all kinds of good fortune to their happy owners.

As only rich men could afford such luxuries as these expensive charms the superstitions respecting their wealth-giving powers were fostered and maintained. From that time these fowls were treated as fetishes. No one was permitted to beat or hurt a luck fowl (or nsusu a zumbi). It was respected like a chief, and strutted about the town crowing aggressively, as though it were fully cognizant of its own importance.

This fetish fowl was supposed to tell its owner of coming events as danger to the town or to himself. By its crow it predicted the future, and, as only the owner was able to rightly interpret the crow, he had therefore exclusive information which he could use for his own advantage. I found afterward that when these fowls grow old they are killed and eaten only by their owners, and the charm is given to other fowls; and sometimes the charm is put into a billy-goat or into a male pig, and they are then treated with respect like the fetish fowls, and tell their masters by their bleatings and gruntings of future events.

One day Satu told his people that he was going in eight days to visit the great chief of a distant town, and he asked some of his people to go with him. He had fourteen wives, but he promised to take only six of them. He reckoned to be absent about a fortnight, or, as they put it, four nkandu,[^[26]] i. e. sixteen days. Great preparations were made for this visit of ceremony. All who owned bits of finery brought them out of their hiding-places and furbished them anew. Cassava roots were dried, peanuts were shelled, and as the day of departure drew near kwanga[^[27]] bread was made ready for the journey. Messengers had been sent to inform the chief of the coming visit, and had returned with greetings and words of welcome.

The day at last dawned on which Satu was to pay his important visit to a brother chief. Bakula, with a bundle of Satu’s best cloths, cosmetics and trinkets, led the way; then came some ordinary town-folk carrying sleeping-mats, food for the journey, small bottles of palm-oil, and cakes of camwood powder. Following these was our town band, consisting of five ivory trumpets and three drums. Whenever we drew near to a village or town our band played to notify the folk that some great men were coming. Behind the band came Satu with his six wives, other head men followed with contingents of wives from their harems, and Old Plaited-Beard brought up the rear with three of his wives.

We had not gone very far when a snake darted out of the grass on one side of the road, but instead of crossing the path, it turned up towards the oncoming party. Bakula, terrified at the evil omen, called a halt and sent word along the line to ask Satu what was to be done.

While Satu was hesitating Old Plaited-Beard came up, and as soon as he heard of the ill omen he insisted that the whole party should return and start the journey over again. Many protested at this foolishness, but others, swayed by superstitious fears, agreed that the only wise course was to return at once.

Fortunately we were not far from our town, and before the sun was very high we were back at the starting-point, where we rested for a short time, and received the condolences of those left in the town.

If the snake had only turned the other way it would have been an augury of good luck. Bakula, directly he saw it coming out of the grass, should have shouted, and then the snake would have directed its course the opposite way. He might have turned, by prompt action, an ill omen into a good augury, and we should have been saved all this trouble.

After a rest we again started, and as a bird flew along the path in the direction in which we were going everybody began to laugh and crack jokes, for this omen of the bird was entirely in our favour.

About the middle of the afternoon we reached a village, where we decided to spend the night. The chief of this village, being a man of no family, paid homage to Satu, and gave him and the other head men houses for the night, but the ordinary members of the party slept in the open. Satu also received from the chief presents of different kinds of food, as bunches of plantain, baskets of cassava flour, a few fowls, and two demijohns of palm-wine, which was fizzing loudly with fermentation and was strong enough to make them drunk, only fortunately there was not enough of it.

While we were resting I noticed the youngsters in this village played an amusing game called “Antelope,” and they did it in the following manner: All the players but one ran about on all-fours with their faces upwards, one person alone being allowed to stand up, and he was called the “antelope,” and the others were called the “hunters.” They scuttled about in this ridiculous attitude, and each tried to touch, or kick the “antelope” with his foot.