Soko

“ In an instant I was round the brake, and there lay Shumari, apparently unhurt, and the Soko — dying!
“Untie his hands,” I said. This was done, and the wounded thing made an effort to stagger to its feet.
A dozen arms thrust it to the ground again. “ Let him rise,” I said; “help him to rise;” and Mabruki helped the Soko on to its feet.
Powers above! If this were an ape, what else were half my expedition? The wounded wood-thing passed its right arm round Mabruki’s neck, and taking one of his hands, pressed it to its own heart. ”

“ Sokos collect together and make a drumming noise, some say with hollow trees, then burst forth into loud yells, which are well imitated by the natives’ embryotic music. When men hear them, they go to the sokos; but sokos never go to men with hostility. Manyuema say, ‘Soko is a man, and nothing bad in him.’
“If a man has no spear the soko goes away satisfied; but if wounded he seizes the wrist, lops off the fingers and spits them out, slaps the cheeks of his victim, and bites without breaking the skin. ”

“ When a Soko catches a man it holds him, and makes faces at him, and jabbers; sometimes it lets him go without doing him any harm, but generally it bites off all his fingers one by one, spitting them out as it bites them off, and his nose and ears and toes as well, and ends up by strangling him with its fingers or beating him to death with a branch. ”

“ The response came on the instant, and in a few minutes there was a cordon round the brake at one hundred yards radius, each man about twenty yards or so from the next. But all was silent as the grave. As jet nothing had got through our line, I felt sure; and if therefore Shumari had indeed seen the Soko, the Soke was still within the circle of our guns. A few tufts of young rattan grew between the line and the brake in the centre of. which were our goods, and unless it was up above us, hidden in the impervious canopy overhead, where was the Soko? ”

“ He seems to be amused by the sight of the young native in his arms, but comes down when tempted by a bunch of bananas, and as he lifts that drops the child; the young soko in such a case would cling closely to the armpit of the elder. One man was cutting out honey from a tree, and naked, when a soko suddenly appeared and caught him, then let him go. ”

“ The Soko brings forth at times twins. A very large Soko was seen by Mohamad’s hunters, sitting picking his nails; they tried to stalk him, but he vanished. Some Manyuema think that their buried dead rise as Sokos, and one was killed with holes in his ears, as if he had been a man. He is very strong, and fears guns, but not spears. He never catches women. ”

“ The hands, or rather the fingers, are like those of the natives. The flesh of the feet is yellow; and the eagerness with which the Manyuema devour it, leaves the impression that eating Sokos was the first stage by which they arrived at being cannibals; they say the flesh is delicious. The Soko is represented by some to be extremely knowing, successfully stalking men and women while at their work ”

“ At dark the big Sok goes to bed with the camels and the donkeys and the sheep; man and beast bed down together; and it is an eerie place to pick one’s way through when the night is dark. From choice we lived, when in Tangier, across the big Sok, at the Hôtel Cavilla, and sometimes of an evening, after dinner, would descend the slope, passing through the gates, down the narrow, cobbled streets, to the Soko Chico, with its flaring [86] cafés, to sit perhaps and watch a Moorish kaid pit his skill at chess against a German champion. ”

“ Shumari, a hunter born and bred, was full of Soko lore; the skin, he said, was covered, except on the throat, hands, and feet, with a short, harsh hair of a dark color, and tipped in the older individuals with gray; these also had long growths of hair on the head, their cheeks and lips. It had no tail.
“Standing up,” said he, “it is as tall as I am [he was only five feet one inch] , and its eyes are together in the front of its face, so that it looks at you straight. It eats sitting up, and when tired leans its back against a tree, putting its hands behind its head. ”

“ They often go erect, but place the hand on the head, as if to steady the body. When seen thus, the soko is an ungainly beast. The most sentimental young lady would not call him a "dear," but a bandy-legged, pot-bellied, low-looking villain, without a particle of the gentleman in him. Other animals, especially the antelopes, are graceful, and it is pleasant to see them, either at rest or in motion: the natives also are well made, lithe and comely to behold, but the soko, if large, would do well to stand for a picture of the Devil. ”

“ Livingstone saw the nest of a soko, or gorilla, and pronounced it a poor architectural contrivance. A young soko, however, he regarded as the most wonderful object in nature, so ugly as to excite astonishment, yet so quaint as to stimulate curiosity. Like the kangaroo, it leaves one in doubt whether repulsion or attraction is uppermost in the mind when viewing it. In the vicinity are hot springs, and earthquakes are common, passing from east to west. The tribes of Bambarre hold the Manyuema in great fear, regarding them as of man eating propensity. ”

“ At least the animals do not make the innocent suffer for the guilty, and give their lives unjustly. Should a soko try to take another's wife he is publicly punished by the tribe. These animals have a great sense of humour and fully enjoy a practical joke. Strangely enough, they never attack women and children, but if any man approaches them with a spear or gun, they try to rush upon him, often at the expense of their own life, and wrest the weapon from him. Most of them are exceedingly kind and civilised in their actions, and natives always say, "Soko is a man, and nothing bad in him." ”

“ Here in the Soko is the true frontier between the Christian and the Moslem worlds. Here is the borderland of the real Africa; here couriers from Fez and from the desert region farther south meet the postmen of the European 38 provinces; here surges the murky tide of African humanity; here breaks the last sun-crested wave of continental civilization; here top-hats and turbans mingle; here Europe ends and Africa begins.
THE BE-DRAPED, BE-HOODED CROWD
From the windows of the legation of a European nation which open upon the Soko, there are wafted lively measures of piano melody ”

“ I determined that I would not; so, before leaving Zanzibar, served out to every man twenty yards of net. These, in the daytime, were worn round the head as turbans, and at night spread upon sticks, and furnished each man a protection against these Macbeths of the sedge and brake. The men thoroughly understood their value, and before turning in for the night, always carefully examined their nets for stray holes, which they caught together with fibres. But somehow I could not go to sleep for a long while; the pain in my arm where the Soko seized me was very great at times ”

“ Sokoh or Soko, the name of two places in Palestine: Shocho, Shochoh, Sochoh, Soco, Socoh.
7756 שׂוּכָתִים (soo-kaw-thee') : probably patronymic from a name corresponding to שׂוֹך (feminine) ; a Sukathite or descendant of an unknown Israelite named Sukah: Suchathite.
7757 שׁוּל (shool) : from an unused root meaning to hang down; a skirt; by implication, a bottom edge: hem, skirt, train.
7758 שׁוֹלָל (sho-lawl') : or sheylal (Micah 1:8) ; from שָׁלַל; nude (especially bare-foot) ; by implication, captive: spoiled, stripped. ”

“ Almost every native wears a leopard-skin cap. The sokos (gorillas) are in the woods, and woe befall the man or woman met alone by them; for they run up to you and seize your hands, and bite the fingers off one by one, and as fast as they bite one off, they spit it out. ”

“ In subtlety of sound Sokoteri is painfully rich, and we had the greatest difficulty in transcribing the words. They corkscrew their tongues, they gurgle in their throats, and bring sounds from most alarming depths, but luckily they do not click. They have no word for a dog, for there is not a dog on the island; neither for a horse nor a lion, for the same reason; they seemed surprised at the idea that there might be such words in their language; but for all the animals, trees, and articles commonly found there they have words as distinct from the Arabic and Mahri as cheese is from fromage. ”

“ Beside the small river—scarcely more than a brook—we journeyed over ground thickly covered with herbage and flowers. For a few minutes we allowed our camels to browse, then urged them on, remembering it was imperative that we should arrive at Sokoto before the gate closed for the night. The shadow cast by the rocks, the cool rippling of the water, and the fertility of the country we appreciated after the arid, sun-baked wilderness. ”

“ These states and Sokoto itself, known variously as the Sokoto or Fula empire and Hausaland, came (c. 1900–1903) under direct British control, but the native governments are maintained. The province of Sokoto occupies the north-west corner of the British protectorate, and is bounded west and north by French territory. South and east it adjoins other parts of the British protectorate. Bordering north on the Sahara, it contains much arid land, but south-west the land is very fertile. ”

“ Seldom are we in Sokoto itself, for of later years its prosperity hath declined, and the palace is of meagre proportions; indeed, it is now half-ruined and almost deserted. The wealth and industry of the empire is centred here in Kano, for our trade extendeth as far north as Mourkouk, Ghat, and even Tripoli; to the west, not only to Timbuktu, but even to the shores of the great sea; to the east, all over Bornu; and to the south, among the Igbira, the Igbo, and among the pagans and ivory hunters of the Congo. ”

“ They stood with their warriors at the outposts against the crowding white settlers from the west and south. They were pleased to stand there, because it was the post of danger and of honor in the nation. And there they bravely kept their stand against that wide front of war, and took the battle on themselves, till the snows of more than a hundred winters were made red by their rifles and tomahawks. But those who court death must often fall into his embrace. So with the Sokokis. ”

“ It was common knowledge, I remembered, that the women of Sokoto were extremely superstitious, believing as implicitly in the sayings of their astrologers as we, of the North, believe in the efficacy of representations of the hand of Fathma of Algiers nailed over our doors to avert the Evil Eye. Was this chamber the sanctum of some seer whose duty it was to forecast the good or evil fortune of the doves of the harem? ”

“ Proud, ignorant, bigoted and insolent, the people of Sokoto are all owners of cattle, camels, horses and slaves. These latter, along with the women, generally cultivate some fields of dhurra, or corn, sufficient for their wants. The Arab, in Sokoto, would consider it a disgrace to practice any manual labour. He is essentially a hunter, a robber and a warrior, and, after caring for his cattle, devotes all his energies to slave-hunting and war. The lower classes are simply a rabble of filth, petty mendicancy, gaol-bird physiognomy and cringing hypocrisy. ”

“ Sokota, one of the great central markets, and capital of the province of Waag in Amhara, at the converging point of several main trade routes; the market is numerously attended, especially by dealers in the salt blocks which come from Lake Alalbed. The following towns are in Shoa:—Ankober, formerly the capital of the kingdom; Aliu-Amba, east of Ankober on the trade route to the Gulf of Aden; Debra-Berhan (Debra-Bernam) (“Mountain of Light”) , once a royal residence; Liché (Litché) , one of the largest market towns in southern Abyssinia. ”

“ The grey, mysterious bush takes on, under such circumstances, a hitherto undreamt-of beauty. The many clumps of tropical vegetation in the frequent open glades one encounters, stand out clear-cut and still, looking like white metal trees fragilely carved out of frosted aluminium.
At eight o'clock in the morning we reached a spot about four miles from Sokode, where our horses were waiting for us in charge of a young European, Mr. Kay H. Nebel. Up to this point I had travelled, after quitting the rail-head, entirely by bicycle and hammock; now it was to be principally horseback riding. ”

“ What impressed me most during my stay in Sokode, however, was the splendidly-appointed Government school, of which Mr. Kuepers is the principal. He is assisted by several native teachers,289 and it is really wonderful to see the way in which the scholars—all boys—from the bush villages hereabouts assimilate the knowledge that is put before them. Mr. Kuepers assured me that they make far apter and better pupils than do European children of a similar age. Their minds seem to be more quick and ready to receive outside impressions. ”

“ The Agau, who form the basis of the local population, are not sufficiently energetic to trade or work tho coalfields in the neighbourhood. The market of Sokota, which lasts three days every week, is mostly visited by the merchants and dealers in salt which serves as the chief small currency of southern Abyssinia, whereas in northern Tigré bales of cloth are employed. The amolch, or salt money, shaped like French whetstones, is procured from the salt lake Alalbed. ”