Paul B. Du Chaillu

“ We were afraid—for nothing is so terrible as a leopard that was once a man. No spear can go through him, no trap can ever catch him, and woe to the man who ever tries to face the beast;” and, as Malaouen said this, his face and that of Querlaouen and Gambo contracted themselves with fear; their superstitions were very strong, and overcame the great courage they possessed. I could hear distinctly the breathing of each man, as by instinct each seized his gun near by. ”

“ Soon we heard the grunts of the wild boars coming; we were delighted; we looked at our guns, then fixed the barrels on the trunk of the tree, raised our heads hardly above it, and only so high that our eyes could get a glimpse at the wild boars.
A PIECE OF STRATEGY. Here they come! I can see them through the jungle, snorting unconsciously and eating what they have uprooted. How little do they think there are such formidable enemies close at hand! ”

“ Wherever they go they make a clean sweep, even ascending to the top of many small trees in search of birds’ nests, and to devour the young of caterpillars. They pursue their poor prey with an unrelenting fury, and seem to be animated with the genius of destruction. Their manner of attack is by an impetuous leap. Instantly the strong pincers are fastened, and they only let go when the piece seized upon gives way. If they were large they would certainly be the most fearful creature man could ever encounter, and they would destroy all the living creatures of the forest. ”

“ The forest is full of dead men’s bones. How could this be, unless we have sorcerers among us?”
The whole crowd of the two camps shouted with one accord, “How could men die unless they are bewitched?” The dread of death was on the face of all; their eyes became wild, and they sought revenge, for none of them wanted to die. “There would be no death without aniemba,” they all shouted; “without aniemba there would be no sickness.” A little more, and the frenzied crowd of the two camps would have rushed forward and cut poor Pendé to pieces. ”

“ In all the tribes that day they mark their bodies with ochre, but I have never been able to find out the reason. To them the moon is the emblem of time. Hence, as the moon appears, many think that before it has disappeared again it will eat people; that is to say, that some one may die.
The fifth day I had been in that village, in the middle of the night, I was awakened by the war-drum beating, shouts of war, and a terrific uproar. Men and women were running to and fro, and all said the enemy was near. One man had been seen outside the palisade and when challenged had run away. ”

“ So plaintive were your cries that they ought to have disarmed the ruthless hand that separated you, so that he would say to himself—“I will nevermore kill a harmless little bird, for God has given them to us to cheer, to enliven the nature that surrounds us.” When night comes, and your mate does not return, how anxious and sad you seem to feel! Perhaps a cruel cat, or some wild animal has destroyed his life. ”

“ I am going to bring you face to face with the gorilla, and lead you into the midst of the wild tribes of men I have discovered. I will tell you how they live, what queer superstitions they have, and what sort of people these poor savages are.
I shall tell you about snakes, leopards, elephants, hippopotami, and other wild beasts of the forest. About insects, wonderful ants, and many other curious things.
You will follow me in that great jungle; you will get lost in it; you will build your camp with me, and you will hunt with me; you will be hungry with me; you will have the flies to plague you ”

“ Querlaouen then told me his history.
“Chaillee,” said he, “my father belonged to a clan which lived in the Ashankolo Mountains, and in his younger days had crossed a large river, called the Ngouyai. He was the chief of a village, and a great warrior. In the country where we lived there was nothing but fighting and fighting; village was against village, and often brother against brother; not a day passed that some one was not killed. You know our mode of warfare; we kill any one, old man, woman, or babe—we have no mercy. One night my father’s village was attacked. ”

“ When the storms had tumbled down the little nest you had built with so much trouble, how distressed you seemed to be, and how industrious you were to build another one! So, little birdies, I found that, like man, you have your joys, your cares, your troubles, and your sorrows. The stormy billows of life are also for you. ”

“ The cries of the chimpanzee are not heard, the wild buffalo is not to be seen, the graceful antelopes and gazelles are unknown, and the chatter of monkeys does not fall upon the ear of the people or resound strangely in the woods. But all these roam at leisure on the main-land, where the villages of the warlike Shekiani and Bakalai people are scattered over the great, wild forest. ”

“ How strange they look as they wander through the forest, sometimes a few together, at other times twenty or thirty, or even larger numbers!
That morning we got into new and fresh tracks of the wild boars; the earth was all uprooted by their snouts. ”

“ IN THE CREEK OF SERPENTS. Just at this moment I spied one of these black snakes trying to get into our canoe by the bow. I made a tremendous leap, as if I had been bitten by a scorpion, the sight was so sudden. I took my gun, loaded with small shot—the best load to kill serpents with—and fired, cutting the saucy fellow in two; then we paddled on, leaving master snake to take care of himself, knowing that his case had been settled. ”

“ As we approached nearer their excitement increased; the war-drums beat, and I could see them brandishing their spears. My men sang songs in the Mpongwe language to show that we were not their enemies.
In the mean time I did not feel comfortable at all, and really thought that we might have a fight. I knew these Shekiani people to be funny fellows: if we had gone back, a dozen canoes armed with men would have been after us, for they would have immediately thought we were their enemies. So we pushed on, and at last came opposite the village. ”

“ At last we saw four stalwart fellows, tattooed all over, covered with hunting and war fetiches, armed to the teeth with spears, and two of them carried Ashinga nets, with which they had been hunting on a small scale, and had with them one gazelle (a ncheri) .
Suddenly coming to their canoe, they saw Querlaouen’s foot-prints, which threw them into a great state of excitement, when one of them pointed to the other, my foot-prints, saying, “What are those marks? they must be the marks of a spirit!” ”

“ As they fly around one they do not appear as if intent upon an attack, but before you know it the fly has come, and in such a gentle way that you do not notice it at all, for they insert their bill very gently into your body. They will stay until they have sucked your blood and filled themselves with it, and generally I never knew of their attack till I felt the itch which follows the bite when the fly has gone. ”

“ I am in a very complicated network of creeks, swamps, dense forest, and overflowed lands, forming a delta, which in the work I published in 1861 I named the Delta of the Ogobai. For several days I have been here in a canoe exploring the country by water. What a lonely place! We have not seen a single village, we have met not a single human being; it is a complete desolation, and on the day in question it seemed more desolate than usual. The creek we had got into was narrow, and on both sides there was an interminable forest of palms, that kind which yields bitter nuts to eat ”

“ I defy any living man to stand quiet before an army of bashikouay; he would certainly be killed and devoured. This was incontestably the largest army of bashikouay I have ever seen, and how it swept over the forest, driving every thing before it!
These little ants are more powerful when combined in such an army than any living thing in the forest. All other animate things are put to flight before their march. It is only in the interior that one can have an idea of their number. ”

“ The drums begin to beat, wild songs are sung, and there is a great stir. The wives of the King have all turned cooks, and are all busy; the village seems to be in a blaze of smoke, for every thing is cooking, and soon the repast is to be ready. ”

“ Once while staying in a Bakalai village there were two women, who were quietly washing, and were killed and left there, until the people, wondering at their disappearance, looked for them, and found them dead.
When war has once really broken out in the country there is no rest or safety. No man or woman in any village can take a step in any direction, day or night, without fear of death. They lie in ambush to surprise each other’s villages. If they have guns, they come on the sly and shoot through the bark of which their houses are made, and kill sleeping persons ”

“ There is always great rejoicing when an iboco is killed. They are very plentiful in the regions of the Ovenga River; indeed, I have never seen them in such great numbers anywhere else. They like to be by the water and in open places. I have never seen them except in the clearings.
Many and many times have I started as if stung by a scorpion or centipede, when it was nothing but an iboco, whose bill had gone through two or three of my garments. Their bite is quite as painful as that of a scorpion, but happily it is not venomous, and the pain does not last long ”

“ You need not think for a moment that the day is over with the flies, and that one is going to rest. Toward four o’clock, when the sun begins to go down and lays hidden back of the hills, the iboco, nchouna, and ibolai disappear. The igooguai, as I have said before, makes again its appearance to plague and annoy; toward sunset they retire for parts unknown to me, and several varieties of musquitoes make their appearance to remind man that he is made of flesh and blood. ”

“ Pendé was a younger brother of King Obindji, and was himself the chief of a village. Pendé was disliked by every body. The fearful accusation which the Bakalais brought against him was this. Pendé was said to have stolen the bones of dead persons in the forest and to have made a fetich with them, which fetich was to keep trade away from a particular village. Pendé was an aniemba (a wizard) ; for who ever heard of men who went and stole human bones and kept them, that were not sorcerers? Pendé’s ways were strange and mysterious. People could not understand them, and he must be killed. ”

“ In the morning, when I awoke, the enormous foot-prints of the beast reminded me that it was not a dream.
The next day I bought a goat and tied it by the neck to a tree, just on the border of the forest clearing. Not far from the tree where the goat was tied there was another tree, a huge one, so I concluded to lay in wait there for the leopard, and at night, every preparation having been made before dark, I brought back the goat to the village. ”

“ There were days when I hid myself near a tree close by the place where they came to sleep, but the parrots seemed to know it, and would fly round and round it, and then go away. It is but very seldom that I ever was able to approach parrots when they were perched on a tree standing by itself: they would fly away before I could come within gunshot distance. They are exceedingly shy.
When they approach their nests they always come in the most silent manner, not uttering a single cry. ”

“ We let all our canoes pass down the stream a little way, in order that we might hold a grand palaver. Adouma, Quabi, Rapero, all Quengueza’s nephews, were present. Querlaouen and Malaouen, the two most redoubtable warriors of the Bakalai of the Ovenga, were also there; these five, with Quengueza and myself, formed the Grand Council.
Quengueza, being an old man, was to remain where he was with all the party, while myself and the five others were to move in a canoe and make land near where the elephants were. ”

“ We pulled with the utmost care; our paddles, as they dipped into the water, made no noise at all, and at last we all met.
Then Adouma, the king’s nephew, came and whispered low—“Elephants are here, they are bathing in the river. I have heard them.”
“Are you sure they are elephants?”
“Are they not hippopotami?” I asked.
“No,” he replied, “they are elephants.”
The countenances of all the fellows brightened up; the ivory tusks of the noble beast were, they thought, already in their possession—they were selling the skin of the fox before having killed the animal. ”

“ I had heard of the fierce courage of the gorilla and his attacking man. I began to believe that all that had been told me was untrue; and said so to Miengai, who for sole answer said—“We have not yet seen a man gorilla. The mother gorilla does not fight.”
Night came upon us as we were still beating the bush, and it was determined a little before sunset to camp by the side of a beautiful stream of clear water and to try our luck the next day. We had shot some monkeys and two beautiful guinea-fowls. After our fire had been lit the men roasted their monkey-meat over the coals ”

“ What a terrible superstition this belief in witchcraft is! The father dreads his children, the son his father and mother, the man his wife, and the wives their husbands. A man fancies himself sick; he imagines the sickness has been brought upon him by those who want him out of the way, and at last becomes sick through his fears. At night he fancies himself surrounded by the aniemba who are prowling round his huts, and that evil spirits are ready to enter into him as he comes out ”

“ Many things contribute to their roving habits, but first of all I have said is their great fear of death. They dread to see a dead person. Their sick, unless they have good and near friends, are often driven out of the village to die in loneliness in the forest. Those Bakalai have no burying-ground. After a man is dead the body is thrown anywhere in the forest, and no more attention is paid to it.
The people of these tribes are very superstitious, and often after the death of a man several friendless creatures are accused and condemned in a breath, and murdered in cold blood. ”

“ I have heard the lion roar, but greater, deeper, and more fearful is the roar of the gorilla. So deep is it that it seems to proceed less from the mouth and throat than from the deep chest and vast paunch of the beast. ”