CHAPTER II

IN THE BATETELA COUNTRY

Our ill-fortune in the matter of fuel followed us to the end of the voyage, for we were compelled to stop and cut wood in the forest during the run from Ikoka to Batempa, which under ordinary circumstances should occupy about four hours. The scenery between Ikoka and Batempa is exceptionally fine. The left bank of the Sankuru is flat and swampy, clothed with the impenetrable forest which is so prominent a feature in African river scenery, whose tangled masses of luxuriant vegetation overhang the swiftly rushing stream; but on the right bank red rocky cliffs rise sheer from the water’s edge to a height of some 300 feet, the nesting-place of innumerable grey parrots, the ruddy colouring of the rocks providing a striking contrast to the varied greens of the forest which clothe their summits. The Kasai Company’s factory at Batempa is situated on the right bank a few hundred yards up-stream from the commencement of these cliffs, and the view down-river from the post is one of the finest on the Sankuru. We arrived at Batempa on the morning of December 24th. We had just got our baggage conveyed from the _Velde_ to the shore, and the company’s agent was showing us a suitable position for our camp, when a tornado, which had been threatening all the morning, suddenly broke with characteristic violence and soaked our various loads long before there was time to remove them to the shelter of a rubber drying-house, the water rushing down from the rising ground to the west of the factory in streams several inches deep, completely inundating the ground whereon our baggage had been deposited. Like most of these tropical storms, however, the tornado was of brief duration, and excepting that we had to sleep that night in wet tents pitched in a puddle little harm was done. Since our visit to Batempa the factory has been removed to higher ground, where the rains can work less havoc, and whence an even finer view of the river is obtainable. The day following our arrival was Christmas Day, which we celebrated as well as circumstances would permit with the company’s agent. A sheep, purchased at Ikoka (which, by the way, is considered a rare luxury in most parts of the Kasai), some chickens, a plum-pudding from the Army and Navy Stores, and a chocolate cake, in the art of making which Torday is a past master, accompanied by a bottle of champagne from our limited supply of medical comforts, constituted the feast to which our appetites, as yet unimpaired by contact with the Congo climate, did ample justice; and in place of the old-time ghost stories in the evening we first heard of the existence of what promised to be a truly remarkable animal. As we sat smoking after dinner on the verandah of the agent’s bungalow, admiring the wonderful effects of the moonlight over the Sankuru and listening to the music of Torday’s phonograph, a weird cry echoed through the forest close behind the factory. We were all attention in a moment; neither of us had heard the like before.

The noise was quite distinctive, “Ow-wa,” repeated three or four times, and then silence. We questioned the agent, and he informed us that the cry proceeded from a small animal which was fairly common in the neighbourhood, but which he himself had never seen. He told us that it was held in considerable awe by the natives, and that a former director of the Kasai Company had offered a very large price for a living specimen without being able to induce the people to attempt its capture.

We at once summoned a member of the local Basonge tribe who was employed in the factory, and from him we elicited the following astounding information. The animal is known to the Basonge as the bembe, and to the Batetela as the yuka; it is grey in colour, and is about the size of a fox-terrier dog; it lives in holes in the trees, and although its movements on the ground are slow, it moves in the tree-tops with great agility, always climbing _with its back to the branch_! Its hindquarters are hairless, its legs long, and it walks upon its wrists! It is a dangerous beast to interfere with, although our informant could not tell us exactly what it would do to any one who was rash enough to interfere with it. Obviously we had come across a truly remarkable creature! Needless to say, we were most anxious to secure a specimen, living or dead, of this wonderful animal, so Torday promised a large reward of trade goods to any one who would capture one, and I took many a ramble with my gun in the forest by night in the hope that I might see the form of the “yuka” silhouetted against the sky as he emerged from his resting-place to feed. The creature, it is said, always emits its strange cry when starting out in search of food, and again when returning after its meal, but if disturbed it at once becomes silent, and resting absolutely motionless among the branches (after the manner of monkeys when hunted), it is almost indistinguishable even by daylight. Needless to say, my nightly peregrinations in search of the animal resulted in nothing but scratches and discomfort to myself, and when we left Batempa the yuka remained as much a mystery as the night when we first heard its voice. We were, however, so thoroughly interested in it that we were determined to leave no stone unturned during our stay in the district to obtain a specimen for the Zoo or for the Museum.

Before our porters arrived, and thus enabled us to start for the Lubefu River, we witnessed a very picturesque dance in the factory of Batempa. The local Basonge chief, having heard of our presence and of our desire to purchase articles of native manufacture, came in one morning bringing a large number of interesting objects for sale, and accompanied by his professional dancers and orchestra. During our wanderings in the Kasai we never heard better native music than that produced by this Basonge band. The Bambala of the Kwilu River and the Babunda of the Kancha (peoples of whom I shall have something to say later on) are undoubtedly superior as singers to the Basonge, but as instrumental musicians the latter are unrivalled in the districts we visited. The orchestra was composed of a number of drums, wooden gongs, flutes, and a xylophone. The first two of these might well have been left out, but they are so common in Africa that one’s ears become quite hardened to their deafening and monotonous din. The remarkable point about the orchestra was the flute-playing. Each instrument is capable of producing one note only, but a large number of performers played upon them, and so exactly did they keep time and come in at the right moment that the melody produced was extremely pleasing to the European ear, and quite different to the hubbub with which African dances are usually accompanied. The leader of the orchestra, no small personage in the village, played a large xylophone in which wooden keys of different thicknesses placed above calabashes, varying in size to produce the different notes, were struck with wooden hammers. The dancers performed to the strains of the band. A peculiarity of the Basonge people is the existence of a regularly trained and _paid_ corps of dancers. These consist for the most part of small girls, aged from about eight to ten years, attired in spotless loin-cloths of European cotton-stuff, and covered with many strings of coloured beads. These little ladies move slowly in Indian file, making S-like curves in their course around the band in the mazes of a dance which, if not graceful in itself, presents a very picturesque spectacle as performed by the children. A large number of the men who accompanied the chief also took part in the dance, but the performance of the little girls was undoubtedly the principal feature. Music and dancing are the arts in which the Basonge chiefly excel, and we were unable to find any traces of the carver’s art to compare with the specimens we were later to secure among the Bushongo. The Basonge, however, manufacture some very neat and ornamental basket-work.

[Illustration: THE LEADER OF THE BASONGE ORCHESTRA.]

[Illustration: THE SANKURU NEAR BATEMPA.]

It may seem rather extraordinary that a tribe which is so far ahead of its neighbours in the gentle arts referred to above should be strongly addicted to cannibalism; yet such is the case. At the present day, when the European is firmly established in their country and the centre of government of the district lies on their frontier, the practice of eating human flesh has practically died out, but a few years ago it was very prevalent, and doubtless many instances of it occur to-day unbeknown to any one save the inhabitants of the villages in which they take place.

The Basonge exhibit many other signs of their contact with the white man besides the decline of their cannibalistic habits. Native-made cloth is no longer worn among them, its place having been entirely taken by the cheap cotton goods from Europe which form the present currency in the country, and which have quite superseded the former commodities used in exchange by the natives. In years gone by hoe-blades were largely used for bartering purposes, and even now hoe-blades imported from Europe are readily accepted in exchange for food-stuffs and other local produce, although their value has fallen considerably since the time when a man used to pay from ten to thirty blades for a wife, when four of these useful articles would buy a goat, and when the price of a male slave would not usually exceed twenty. The old-time hard wooden spears and bows and arrows have largely given place to cheap trade guns, and in many other ways the Basonge are exhibiting signs of that change which must assuredly come over native life when once the European has firmly set foot in the country.

At Batempa we engaged a cook and three “boys.” My henchman, engaged on Stanley Pool, had returned down the river in the _Velde_ on his way back to Leopoldville, where he could indulge his propensities for idling to the fullest extent, so we were left with Jones as the sole native member of our party. We decided to employ as personal servants quite young boys who had never previously been in the service of a European, and allow Jones to teach them their duties. I think it is far more satisfactory as a rule, when a long stay is to be made in Africa, for the European to engage as his “boy” a young, intelligent savage, and “break him in” himself than to take over some one else’s servant. The negro when a child is extremely quick at learning anything which interests him, and the newly acquired dignity of becoming a white man’s “boy” is quite sufficient to give the lad an interest in his work. If one has another European’s cast-off “boy” one finds that he has usually learned bad habits from long intercourse with the semi-civilised natives of the factory or Government post, and also it will take him a long time to unlearn the ways to which his late master has accustomed him and become used to those of his new employer. On the whole, therefore, I think it is best for the white man, whenever possible, to train his own boy, and the result will almost surely be that he will get exactly the servant that he deserves. Treat your boy well and he will repay you with faithful service; keep him in his place or he will presume upon your good nature and become careless and idle; be absolutely just in all your dealings with him, as you would be with the porters who carry your loads from one place to another, and never allow him to imagine that the fact that he is your confidential servant will save him from punishment should he provoke disputes by his arrogance in the villages at which you stay. My “boy,” Sam, whom we engaged at Batempa, was in my employ for close upon two years, during the whole of which time he carried the keys of my boxes and was responsible for their contents; I never had a single article stolen from them. This should prove that the much-abused African servant can, at any rate, be honest. While on the subject of “boys” let me say a word as to their payment. In the Congo one is obliged when in a Government post to make a written contract with one’s “boy,” duly signed by a magistrate, but in the bush one cannot, of course, observe this regulation, and one accordingly writes out a contract oneself and explains to the “boy” what it contains. The wages paid to uncivilised natives engaged up-country are very low, and I think it is as well to arrange as low a rate of pay as possible with one’s “boy,” afterwards delighting him with occasional presents. “Boys” are usually hired by the month, but I consider it a great mistake to actually pay the boy monthly, especially when travelling about. Let him know, of course, exactly how much he is entitled to, and explain to him that he can draw his pay as it becomes due, but offer to keep it for him and let him draw from you goods as he actually requires them. It is no trouble to write down the amounts he draws on the back of his contract, and you will do the “boy” a kindness by restricting his natural inclination to squander his earnings; in addition to this you will have to carry about with you rather less trade goods than if you always had to pay your servants at the end of each month. “Boys” waste their pay in most ridiculous ways. It is very common indeed for a lad fresh from the “bush” to be kindly received by older servants in some Government post which you happen to visit. These “sharks” suggest that on his departure he should seal a friendship with them by an interchange of gifts, by which means they extract a good sum in trade goods from the boy, giving him some useless article in return. It is astonishing how prevalent this custom is, and it is incredible how often the same boy can be caught by the trick. If he has to come to you to draw the goods he will think twice about spending them, or very likely tell you why he wants them, in which case you can show him that he is being made a fool of. I am sure that the very little trouble caused by this method of banking for your boy is more than repaid by the greater honesty with which he will serve you. Once let him have the entire management of his earnings and he will squander them in a very short time, after which, being penniless, he will very likely steal. If he has to come to you when he wants his goods he will also be less likely to gamble, and gambling among the servants must be put down with a firm hand or wholesale robbery will result. It is illegal to hit one’s boy, but gambling, hemp-smoking, and drunkenness can only be met by immediate chastisement, which, however, need not be resorted to for anything else; for theft, of course, must result in dismissal. These remarks only apply to “boys” engaged for expeditions such as ours or for service in remote up-country stations. On the coast, where money is the currency and the innumerable temptations to spend it inseparable from big settlements are everywhere to be found, it is hopeless to try and look after one’s “boy’s” financial affairs; but in civilised places older and more experienced servants are employed, and these are, or should be, able to take care of themselves. During our journey we always employed the system of banking described above and never once regretted it. When we paid off “Sam” just before our return to Europe he was a rich man; had he been paid monthly he would not have had a penny to his name. In his case we paid over his earnings to a missionary near his home to obviate the risk of his being robbed of them on his way back from the coast. Sam, who was only about twelve years of age, commenced his service for a fixed wage of eight yards of cotton material per month! Our cook, Luchima, a member of the Batetela tribe, received double this amount. He turned out to be a fair cook, as cooks go in Central Africa, and a faithful servant, whom only ill-health prevented from accompanying us to the end of our journey. The other servants engaged consisted of a “boy” for Hardy, also very young, and another lad whose name, being interpreted, signified “Onions,” and who was to do odd jobs about the camp, help the other boys, and carry a few of the small objects, such as camera, water-bottle, &c., which we should need upon the march.

After a few days spent at Batempa the porters who were on their way home to the Lubefu arrived, and we could start upon our journey. Sixty-five men under two “capitas” or headmen appeared, so we were able to take most of our impedimenta with us, leaving a few “chop-boxes,” or cases of provisions, at Batempa, to be sent for as required. The porters on the whole were a fine sturdy lot of men, for the Batetela as a rule are powerful people; all were attired in loin-cloths of imported cotton, and many wore suspended from their belts the skins of small wildcats which are so commonly worn in this district as to form part of the national dress of the Batetela. The distribution of loads to a new lot of porters is very often a very troublesome business. One naturally tries to give the heaviest objects to the bigger men, but unless one keeps a sharp look-out the strong ones will frequently pass on their burdens to others, physically less fit, who are unable to resent this treatment. Porters will usually try to secure the smallest loads, quite regardless of the weight, preferring a very heavy but compact box of cartridges to an almost empty wooden crate. This is not so ridiculous as it may at first sight appear, for all over the Kasai district double loads are carried attached to a pole borne upon the shoulders of the porters, so that a small and heavy package is less fatiguing to carry along the narrow, tortuous forest paths than a large but lighter one, which would need careful steering to prevent it continually catching in the branches which overhang the road. When once a load has been handed over to its porters they are responsible for it until they reach their destination. The usual rule is to pay the carriers their wages at the end of the journey, and to serve out to every man each day a quantity of the rough salt which takes the place of small change in most parts of the Kasai, and with which the porters can buy food in the villages where the caravan halts for the night. Upon leaving the shores of the Sankuru our way lay for a few miles through the dense belt of forest which borders the river, in the course of which we had to scale some steep ascents that caused our porters some trouble in carrying their loads, for the track near the factory was none of the best and much overhung by trees and bushes; but once we had left the river forest behind us our path lay in great undulating grassy plains in which very few trees were visible, except in the valleys where little streams meandered through strips of woodland. The weather was intensely hot, and our twenty-three days of inactivity on board the _Velde_ had by no means fitted us for much exertion, so we felt the effects of our first day’s march rather severely. Torday experienced one of his rare attacks of fever about an hour before reaching the village at which we were to spend the night, and collapsed upon the road, but we sent back the portable hammock in which Hardy was travelling to bring him in, and a little treatment and some sleep brought his temperature down, so that he was able to march next day. We camped at the little village of Okitulonga, the first of the Batetela settlements that we entered. There was very little of interest in the place save that here we first saw the Batetela hut, which is nowadays being gradually superseded in many villages by rectangular dwellings built of plaster, modelled upon the plan of the European’s bungalow. The native Batetela hut is circular, with very low walls—only some two feet high—covered with a high conical roof of thatched grass. The interiors of these huts are dark and stuffy in the extreme. The men in the village, like our porters, were all dressed in material imported from Europe, but the women’s costume was remarkable, if scanty. It consisted solely of a girdle, from the front of which was suspended a minute piece of cloth, the lower end of which was held in between the legs; at the back a few strings of beads, about eighteen inches in length, hung like a tail from the belt. This completed the dress. The primitive Batetela ladies are nowhere extravagant in the matter of costumes, as I shall show when I describe our visit to those portions of the tribe which inhabit the equatorial forest, but it struck me as rather remarkable that so near the Sankuru, where the men have discarded their native-made loin-cloths in favour of European cotton-stuffs, and where any man will wear any European garment that he can lay hands on, that the women should be so conservative in their loyalty to their scanty national dress. There is plenty of European material to be earned in the district, so one can only imagine that the natives prefer their women to dress in the fashions of their grandmothers. A few of the more important Batetela, particularly those who have served under the white man, will dress their wives in cotton cloth, but this has not yet become the custom with the ordinary inhabitants of the villages.

Our second stage brought us to Kasongo-Batetela, the village of one of the two most important chiefs of this part of the Batetela country; the second one being the chief of Mokunji, whom we were on our way to visit. These men are the overlords of many villages, each of which has its own petty chief. The country at this point is hilly, consisting of about equal portions of forest and tree-studded grass land. Upon our arrival at Kasongo’s village we encamped at the rest-house belonging to the Kasai Company, where the agent from Batempa stays when he visits the place to purchase rubber. We were received by a Sierra Leone clerk in the employ of the Kasai Company, who informed us that Kasongo, whose residence was situated on a hill about a mile from the rest-house, would visit us with his band in the evening. We here broke through our rule of always, where possible, pitching our tents actually in the native village, for we were on our way to study the Batetela nearer the Lubefu, and we knew that we should find ample opportunities later on of observing the daily life of the people, while little could be expected to result from merely sleeping a night in Kasongo’s village; therefore we encamped at the rest-house. Just before sundown the chief came to visit us in state. Attired in a white slouch hat, a white jacket, knickerbockers and stockings, he did not present a very dignified appearance, but if one may estimate his importance by the amount of noise produced by his orchestra he must have been a very great personage indeed. Doubtless he had heard that the Basonge chief at Batempa had impressed us by the quality of his music, and he was not to be outdone by his neighbour. His drummers beat their drums and gongs and yelled themselves hoarse, while others added to the din by means of iron bells, and little girls manipulated curiously shaped rattles of basket-work. Except that many of the men wore large tufts of chicken or plantain-eater feathers on their heads, there was nothing striking about the appearance of Kasongo’s followers, and altogether we were not sorry when his visit was at an end. We made a few phonographic records of his music before his departure, and created a great deal of surprise by playing them over to him, together with some records of the Basonge orchestra taken at Batempa. Kasongo was accompanied by his wives, the chief of whom was attired in a great deal of white and blue cloth and carried a bead-covered wand. This lady began to make obvious advances to Hardy; she insisted in sitting as near to him as she could get, and favouring him with glances of the tenderest description. Poor Hardy’s discomfiture was great, for he could not speak a word of the woman’s language, and was at loss to know how to snub her effectually without giving offence; her lord and master, however, did not honour us with his company very long, but soon left us to our dinner, taking his noisy musicians and forward spouse with him. After leaving Kasongo-Batetela we began to approach the villages in which we had been told by the magistrate at Lusambo we should in all probability be attacked. We had determined to proceed from the Sankuru to the Lubefu unattended by an armed escort despite this friendly warning, for we were convinced that the presence of armed men in our caravan could not fail to arouse the suspicion of the natives and ruin our chances of gaining their confidence, without which we might just as well have stayed at home for all the amount of information as to their habits and customs which we should be able to extract from them. When once a native whom you are questioning becomes suspicious of your motives he can be as obstinate as a mule, and not one atom of information will you get out of him even if you are possessed of the patience of Job. I have often seen a half-suspicious, half-idiotic expression come over a native’s face when we have been discussing with him a point relating to his beliefs, or some other delicate subject, and I learned to know that further interrogation of that particular individual would be merely a waste of time; he does not quite know why you are asking questions, and nothing will induce him to answer them. This obstinacy can be exceedingly annoying. I have heard Torday talking by the hour to an intelligent native, from whom he has got quite a fund of information, trying gradually to work up to some important question regarding religion, but as soon as this question has been mooted the man has closed up his brain like a book and become as stupid as he was intelligent before he realised what turn the conversation was taking. It is worse than useless to lose one’s temper under circumstances like these; one can only wait and try to elicit the information from some one else. In order to obtain a real knowledge of the negro, then, it is quite essential that one should enjoy his confidence, and the surest way to prevent doing so is to arrive in his village with an armed escort. In the first place, the mere fact of one’s being accompanied by men equipped for war leads him to suppose that one anticipates trouble; and, secondly, the men who comprise the escort are very likely to bully or insult the villagers unbeknown to the white man, who, of course, gets the credit for their aggressions. We could not afford to run the risk of becoming unpopular at the very outset of our journey, for one’s reputation among the natives spreads far in advance in Africa, so we preferred to attempt a perfectly peaceful march to the Lubefu, relying upon tact to save us should any unpleasantness arise. Of course we carried with us our shot-guns and sporting rifles, for these we should need in shooting for the pot or collecting natural history specimens. I arrived in the first of the “doubtful” villages in the pouring rain carried in Hardy’s hammock, for I had a sharp attack of fever on the marsh, and my reception, if not cordial, was certainly not hostile, and, as far as my drowsy condition would allow me to observe, no one paid any particular attention to me. We camped in the village, and except that Torday heard some one making a rather anti-European speech during the night there was nothing to lead one to suppose that the natives were not on the best of terms with the white man. But it was at the next village, Osodu, one day’s journey from the Lubefu, where trouble was said to be the most likely to arise. We were not a little surprised, therefore, to find on the morrow that several stalwart natives of Osodu had arrived saying that they heard that a white man was ill upon the road and that they had come to carry him on to their village. This did not look much like the hostility against which we had been cautioned, and when we reached Osodu our reception was of the best. We then learned what had given rise to the magistrate’s fears for our safety. The chief of Osodu is subordinate to the more important chief of Mokunji, to whose village we were travelling. As I have already pointed out, a former chief of Mokunji, by name Okito, had been deposed by the Government, and Jadi, an ex-soldier who had served in the Arab wars, had been appointed by the authorities to take his place as being likely, having fought under the white man, to be friendly in all his dealings with the European. One or two of the petty chiefs of the country had, quite naturally I think, resented this interference on the part of the Government in the matter of the succession to the overlordship of the district and had declined to recognise Jadi as their paramount chief. The authorities having once set Jadi upon his throne, were of course bound to support him, and had therefore threatened the petty chiefs with imprisonment if they persisted in their refusal to acknowledge his suzerainty over them. The chief of Osodu had been obdurate and had accordingly been sentenced to a few months of imprisonment at the Government post of Lubefu. His people were very indignant at this treatment and had been loud in their protests against it; but they realised no doubt that an attack upon white men would not be likely to regain their chief his liberty, so they decided to receive us with open arms and endeavour to enlist our influence on behalf of the prisoner. Their indignation at the treatment of their chief had been the cause of the magistrate’s fears for our safety should we enter their village. We had let it be generally known that we belonged to a different “tribe” of white men to the Government officials and to all other European residents in the country, and that we were simply travelling in order to see the people. We always in future circulated this information about ourselves, and by its means we were able to pick up a lot of information concerning various illegal practices, such as the poison ordeal and cannibalism, which the natives would undoubtedly have withheld from an official.

The village of Osodu is provided with a rest-house for the use of European travellers passing from the Sankuru to the Lubefu, and to this we were conducted by a crowd of villagers accompanied by drummers and bell players. Here we were received by the imprisoned chief’s four little sons, aged from about five to ten years, and by the prime minister. The children did the honours at the reception themselves. Dressed in old waistcoats and straw hats and obviously very much got up for the occasion these little fellows presented us with the usual gift of chickens for our evening meal, and, in addition to this, produced a liberal supply of manioc porridge and meat as rations for our men. Torday decided that it would be wise for us to be lavish in our presents to the people of Osodu, so he gave our baby hosts a generous amount of trade goods, drawing from one of the villagers the quaint remark, “These white men are like children, they are so good.” The interchange of presents having been accomplished the prime minister proceeded to try to obtain from us a promise to intercede with the Government on behalf of the father of the four little boys who sat gravely staring at us while he spoke. He related to us the circumstances of the chief’s imprisonment, and begged us to use the influence, which he was convinced great men such as ourselves must possess, to obtain his release. We replied that we had no authority whatsoever to meddle in such matters, but Torday promised if occasion arose to put in a word with the authorities on behalf of the village of Osodu.

During the two days we spent there we became quite attached to our little hosts. Their delight with any trifle with which we presented them was so real and so different to the grasping manner with which presents to the negro are often received that it was a real pleasure to give them presents. I remember one of the little fellows beating the ground with his fists in his joy at receiving two or three empty Mannlicher cartridges to hang around his neck! As usual our phonograph created a great impression. After we had given a concert, at which the entire village attended, some one asked us, “What do you call that? Witchcraft?” “Oh, no,” modestly replied Torday, “it is only our cleverness.” “That is witchcraft,” said the native; “cleverness stops short of that.” As I was sitting on the edge of the crowd which was listening intently to the phonograph, smoking my pipe and amusing myself by studying the expressions of the natives as the instrument played the record of a laughing song, I noticed that a man squatting on his haunches at the side of my chair was periodically waving his hand with a peculiar sweeping movement towards his face. I was at first quite at a loss to know what he was about, until it suddenly dawned upon me that he was endeavouring to direct into his own mouth the clouds of tobacco smoke that I expelled from my lips! Evidently he had left his pouch at home. The Batetela are great smokers and cultivate tobacco themselves, which they consume in pipes in which the smoke is drawn through water contained in a calabash under the bowl. They take enormous mouthfuls of smoke, so enormous, in fact, that they frequently produce attacks of coughing violent enough to end in a fainting fit, the unfortunate smoker then becoming the object of much mirth and rough chaff from his neighbours.

[Illustration: A BATETELA DRUMMER.]

[Illustration: BATETELA WALL PICTURES.]

At Osodu we first saw specimens of the curious pictures in red, black and white, with which the modern Batetela love to decorate the mud wall of their new houses built upon the plan of a bungalow. These represent wild animals, natives armed with bows and arrows attacking others equipped with guns, white men travelling in hammocks accompanied by an escort, and, in one instance, a white man sitting in a chair drinking out of an enormous bottle! Some of the pictures include horses, which the artist must have seen at Lusambo, where three or four of these animals are kept. The drawings are crude in the extreme, but they are none the less curious, especially as the art of drawing is very little practised among the peoples of the Kasai, although, as I shall show later on, wood-carving and the ornamentation of textiles has reached a high pitch of excellence in some parts of the districts. At Osodu, too, we also first saw an object whose very existence many people might be inclined to doubt, namely a basket strainer used in the manufacture of soap. The soap is made of burnt banana roots and is of quite useable quality. As a matter of fact most African natives are by no means uncleanly as regards their persons. When on the march carriers will rarely miss an opportunity to bathe in a stream, and many of those peoples who daub themselves with clay apply fresh earth with such regularity as to cause the practice to be by no means so dirty as it sounds; of course some tribes that we visited were filthy in the extreme, but these were the exception rather than the rule. Upon leaving Osodu, which we did accompanied by the local band and with every sign of goodwill on the part of the inhabitants, we entered a tract of country strongly resembling the downs of Sussex, except that the hollows were as a rule filled with woodland and contained brooks, and the grass was, of course, longer and coarser. The march to the village of Mokunji occupied about three hours. As we came within sight of the village we could see a large crowd waiting to receive us, and we were met by a man bringing us a complimentary present of pine apples and bananas who informed us that the Jadi himself was awaiting our arrival a little farther on. Nearer to the village we met the chief. He was a tall, very powerfully built man, with a heavy unintelligent countenance, dressed in garments from Europe. With him came a number of his wives, his drummers, and a good following of slaves and other inhabitants of Mokunji, while behind him strode an attendant bearing the sole weapon noticeable among the crowd, an old flintlock pistol, the stock of which was studded with many brass nails, and which was evidently regarded as a state weapon corresponding to the mace of the Lord Mayor’s show. We all three shook hands with Jadi, who then preceded us to the rest-house in his village, the drummers accompanying us, and vieing with each other who should get the most noise out of his instrument. The rest-house lay upon the edge of the village on the side nearer to the Lubefu River, and, in addition to a plaster building useable as a bedroom, there was a thatched shed without walls under the shade of which the white traveller could take his meals sheltered from the sun or rain. It was beneath this shed that we interviewed Jadi and explained to him the object of our visit. A large crowd collected round us in a moment, so that we were able to gather some impression of the people among whom we were to work. Excepting that here and there one could notice a man wearing a scarlet feather, usually drawn from the tail of a grey parrot while the bird is still alive, stuck into the hair on the crown of his head to denote that he had at some time slain a powerful enemy on the field of battle, there was little of interest in the appearance of the male portion of the population, who were all clothed in the imported cotton material which, to my mind, robs the native of any picturesqueness he may possess, though, doubtless, its adoption is a step towards civilisation. The women, however, were more worthy of attention. Their bodies and thighs, which were quite unclothed by the national costume I have already described, were covered with innumerable scars so placed as to form patterns upon their bodies. These cuts had been rubbed with charcoal when first made, with the result that the scars left by them were black and stood out in bold relief from the skins. Some of them must have projected quite half an inch from the ordinary level of the skin. All Batetela women are more or less scarred, this form of ornamentation (if so it can be described) being one of their national characteristics. Most of the peoples of the Congo with whom we came in contact indulge in scarring to some extent, but few cover their bodies so completely with such marks as do the Batetela women; curiously enough the men of the tribe are rarely scarred. Among the Tofoke tribe of the Lomami River the men cover their faces, even their lips, with cuts, leaving little round lumps all over their countenances, and we were informed by one of them that the process was not so painful as might be imagined, though, as he remarked, the lips were a bit sore until they had completely healed up! Jadi was evidently disposed to be very friendly towards us. Torday explained to him that we should wish to purchase a large number of locally made objects, and that we hoped the chief would let it be generally known that we would pay fair prices for almost any kind of articles used by the natives, and also that we should be glad if Jadi himself would tell us a little about his land and his people when we came over to visit him, as we intended to do pretty frequently. No sooner had Torday expressed a wish to purchase curios than we were simply overwhelmed by offers to sell every conceivable thing. The crowd thronged round the shed in which we sat, and implored us to buy knives, arrows, spears, charms, head-dresses, masks, stools, musical instruments—in fact everything that the Batetela possess, including a few empty meat tins left behind by a white man! Evidently it was not going to be difficult to lay the foundations of a fairly extensive collection. During the bargaining, in which he himself participated, selling us quite a number of objects, Jadi sneezed; in a moment every one present was clapping his hands, and saying “Ah, Ah.” It is, we discovered, a custom among these people always to applaud the chief when he sneezes!

In the cool of the evening, when we had purchased all the articles which seemed at first sight to be worth collecting, we took a stroll round the village. We at once noticed that the place is (or rather was, early in 1908) in a state of transition from a primitive Batetela village to a small town designed after the manner of European settlements in Africa. This change offers an instance of the tendency of the Batetela to embrace any new ideas introduced among them by the white man. The old circular huts were rapidly giving place to buildings of plaster, and these latter were neatly arranged in wide streets radiating from the residence of the chief. The regularity of the way in which the place was planned was a great contrast to the jumble of huts which constitutes the usual African village. Of the number of inhabitants of Mokunji I cannot speak with any certainty; it is a large village as Batetela villages go, but it seems to me to be almost impossible to arrive at the numbers of the male population of any Congo village, unless, of course, one could hold a roll call of the warriors. Among the Batetela every wife has a house of her own, but as most men have more than one wife, and many of them have a good number (it being considered correct for a man of good position to keep up as many establishments as he can afford), the number of huts in a village offers no clue to the number of the male population. I have often marvelled at the statistics so often published of the number of native inhabitants of the Belgian Congo. How are these figures arrived at? And how can they pretend to be even approximately correct? An official census is, I believe, periodically made by the _chefs de poste_, but in most parts of the country the very whereabouts of many villages is often unknown to the white resident, and even if he could personally visit every hamlet in his district, it would, I should think, be quite impossible for him to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion as to the number of people they contained. If a list of natives is required for purposes of taxation, it is hardly likely that every man will come forward to be enrolled; counting the huts is often, as I have shown, a very uncertain way of getting at the true numbers of the population, and chiefs by no means always tell the truth, especially to an official. Under the circumstances, therefore, I am sure that guesswork must be to a great extent the means by which the figures referred to are arrived at. Torday and I have often hazarded guesses at the number of people inhabiting various villages in which we have stayed some time; our guesses frequently differed from one another to an extraordinary degree. It is, therefore, to be presumed that the opinion of an official who attempts to give an estimate of his population may very likely differ considerably from the opinion of his predecessor in the district. Under these circumstances, I cannot understand how it is possible to form any reliable conclusion as to the increase or decrease of the population. Any one travelling along a Congolese highway may come across ruined or deserted villages, and may thus be led to believe that the numbers of the natives are diminishing. But the people will move their homes to another site for very trifling reasons—one of the forest tribes we visited will abandon a village on the death of any important inhabitant—so the existence of deserted villages cannot, in many cases, be taken into consideration in calculating the number of the natives.

I shall, in the course of my narrative, avoid expressing any opinion as to the numerical strength of the tribes we visited, for I feel that such opinions must be worthless.

We did not, upon this first visit to Jadi, inspect his own residence, but on several subsequent occasions we found opportunities for doing so. There is nothing really remarkable about the dwelling; it consists of a large audience hall with a dais at one end, upon which stands the royal throne—a deck chair decorated with brass-headed nails. At the back of this hall, in an enclosed courtyard, are the huts of the chief’s wives. Everything about the dwelling was neat and tidy, but there was nothing really remarkable about the place; even the “fetishes,” to which Jadi attaches much importance, and which are situated in the courtyard, consisting only of bowls placed upon stakes driven into the ground. As is usually the case among the peoples of the Kasai, the Batetela do not _worship_ their fetishes, but merely regard them as charms which have been endowed by the “medicine-man” with powers to ward off some evil or to produce some good effect. Small fetishes are worn on the person everywhere in the Congo, and Jadi wears some in his hair, which are supposed to warn his head against any plot which may be hatched against it.

Around the village of Mokunji are extensive plantations, for the inhabitants are born agriculturists, and are ready to plant any useful crops which may be introduced among them. As they have come in contact with the influence of both the European and the Arab, and as many of them have served in the army, and thus been able to observe cultivation in widely scattered districts of the Congo, the Batetela have learned to grow a greater variety of crops than any of the other peoples we visited, so that, the soil of their country being very productive, food-stuffs are readily and cheaply procurable among them; millet, manioc, maize, sweet potatoes, rice, ground-nuts, onions, beans, plantains, and bananas all being cultivated, while a certain amount of quite smokeable tobacco is also grown. As I shall show later on, when describing our wanderings in the equatorial forest, the traveller can always be sure of obtaining a plentiful supply of food for his porters whenever he reaches a village occupied by one of the more advanced sub-tribes of the Batetela nation. We left Jadi after one night spent at his capital town, promising to return to continue our purchase of curios, and proceeded to our destination near the Lubefu, the Kasai Company’s factory of Mokunji, which lies about one and a half hour’s march to the east of Jadi’s village. The factory is built upon the crest of one of the grassy downs which, as I have said, are a feature of this part of the country, and, owing to its exposed position, it is swept by every wind, and is accordingly comparatively cool and healthy. Upon our arrival we were cordially received by the Company’s agent, who placed a house at our disposal, wherein we could do our work with the deposed chief whom we had come to visit, and where we could store the objects we collected. We pitched our camp on the edge of the post. Next morning Okitu, the ex-chief of the local Batetela, the predecessor of Jadi, came to call upon us. At the time of our visit he was simply a private individual, devoid of any recognised authority, who had taken up his residence near the factory at the invitation of the agent, who had been struck with his intelligence and friendly bearing, but, nevertheless, we could see that he really exercised a considerable influence upon a good many of the natives, who, like the people of Osodu, had no great affection for Jadi. Okitu, modest and unassuming though he was, had far more the manner of a chief than the blunt, soldierly, but unintelligent looking man whom we had just visited. He was a thorough native gentleman according to his lights, and had been, so we were informed, a just ruler of his people. Fortunately he took a fancy to Torday, so that he readily consented to assist us in our work of obtaining information about his tribe, with the result that Torday was able to collect a large amount of notes upon a great variety of subjects. For the following five or six weeks Okitu visited us almost daily, and we talked by the hour of the history of his nation, of the Arab wars, of his religion, of the daily life of the people, and other such subjects interesting to the student of ethnology. He told us how his ancestors had come from the north out of the great forest; how, when they reached the Lubefu River, a difficulty as to the leadership had arisen, and a fetish-man had said that he who would command them must lay his right hand upon a stone, and, at one blow, cut off his forefinger with an axe; how the first Mokunji had done this, and had led his tribe over the river to the land of the Basonge, and had, by force of arms, driven the latter to the Sankuru, wresting from them the country in which we then were. He told us how the influence of the Arab slave dealers had gradually crept in from the north-east, dominating even the northern portions of the Batetela tribe, until it reached the Lubefu; how a weak ruler of Mokunji had allowed himself to be persuaded to acknowledge the Arabs’ sway, but how his successor had called his warriors round him, and appealing in 1891 for aid to the white man, newly arrived at Lusambo, had risen against the oppressor and freed his people from the curse of Arab suzerainty with the horrors of its slave trade.

All this, and much more, of the history of his people Okitu told us as Torday plied him with questions, while I noted down the facts as he narrated them, Hardy being busily employed the while with his brushes, depicting types of natives and landscapes, or making accurate diagrams of the patterns of the women’s scars. But it was not only with the history of the Batetela that we were concerned, and Okitu soon learned to trust us sufficiently to confide in us many things about the habits of his people which he would never have told to any one connected with the Government. We freely discussed the question of cannibalism. It appears that among the Batetela, as among the Basonge, the practice of eating human flesh is rapidly dying out, but a few years ago it was extremely prevalent. Prisoners of war and enemies slain on the battlefield were invariably eaten, and numbers of the Batetela tribe who had been convicted of murder were often handed over to some village other than their own to expiate their crimes by serving as a meal to their fellow-tribesmen. Even to this day certain loathsome practices, survivals of cannibalism, obtain at Mokunji which are too revolting to European ears to be described here. In the old days it was the privilege of the chief to maim and mutilate his subjects according to the dictates of his own sweet will, but happily this custom has given way before the advance of civilisation. We discussed with Okitu every possible subject from the gruesome practices I have mentioned to such simple domestic matters as to who is the actual owner of the crops and what are the laws of inheritance. It appears that the food-stuffs grown on the soil cultivated by the women belong actually to the wives, but they must feed their husbands, for, as Okitu naively remarked, “A man does not love his wife nearly so much when there is no food in the house.” As regards inheritance we learned that among the Batetela, as among many African peoples, widows are inherited according to the same law as the dead man’s other household goods! During our stay at the factory we several times visited Jadi’s village, and also interviewed many prominent natives, taking every opportunity of checking Okitu’s statements and assuring ourselves of their veracity. One of the men we questioned was quite a remarkable personage. His name was Umbi Enungu, and he boasted that he was the oldest living member of the Batetela tribe. What right he had to make this statement it is, of course, quite impossible to ascertain, but it is certain that he was very old indeed, so old that he could only walk for a very short distance without resting, and required assistance when rising from a sitting position. This latter infirmity turned out to be rather a good thing for us. We one day played over to the old man some phonograph records, including a newly made record in which Jadi had made a few remarks concerning the history of his people. Umbi Enungu was deeply interested in the songs to which we treated him, but when he heard the record of Jadi’s speech his interest changed in a moment to fury. Apparently Jadi had made some slight mistake with regard to an incident which, though it had occurred in the dark ages, was still fresh in the memory of old Enungu. This error filled the old man with indignation. Seizing a spear which lay at hand, and hurling insults at the head of Jadi and at the phonograph, he strove frantically to rise, expressing his intention of smashing up a machine which could tell such lies. Fortunately his age prevented his getting to his feet to carry out his threats, and we quickly put a stop to the playing of the offending record. The old fellow was then conducted to a shady spot where he could sit down quietly and recover his composure. For some time he sat in silence, making signs about his person with some magic seeds produced from the cat’s-skin bag containing his “medicine,” without which he never moved, and finally he departed evidently still much disturbed in mind. He did condescend to visit us frequently after this incident, however, and he contrived to extort from us a good number of presents, on the receipt of which he would express his pleasure by feebly endeavouring to dance, and by spitting freely in the direction of our feet.

[Illustration: AN OLD-FASHIONED BATETELA HUT.]

[Illustration: JADI AND SOME OF HIS WIVES.]

At the time of our visit to Mokunji the height of the grass, which is not burnt off until about May, prevented our indulging in hunting, and accordingly we brought back very little in the way of natural history specimens from this country. As a matter of fact the list of big game animals of the district is extraordinarily meagre. The antelope family is represented by bush-bucks, duikers, and another beast smaller than the bush-buck, a skin of which I was never able to see, so I cannot say to what species it belongs; the red river hog is common round Mokunji, and leopards are very numerous. Buffalo and elephant are conspicuous by their absence, though a solitary buffalo bull was killed near the Lubefu in 1907; it belonged to one of the small brown species of forest buffalo. Owing to the scarcity of other prey leopards have taken to man-eating with disastrous results to the villages between the Lubefu River and Jadi’s capital. As many as five people—all of them women—were killed in one day within a radius of ten miles from the Kasai Company’s factory, and shortly before our visit a leopard had attacked a chief on the road at sundown as he was returning home after a visit to the Company’s agent. The animal had sprung upon the chief from the high grass by the roadside, but upon becoming aware that he was attended by a considerable following, it had left its victim on the ground little the worse for his adventure. At Mokunji we were lucky enough to secure a living specimen of the mysterious “Yuka,” which had so roused our curiosity at Batempa. Tempted by the high price which Torday offered, the entire population of a hamlet turned out one night and surrounded a tree in which the animal had been heard to give vent to its weird cry; then two young warriors, evidently anxious to display their courage, had climbed the tree and captured the beast. It turned out to be a species of hyrax, which, though not unknown to science, was represented in the Natural History Museum by one skin only, sent home years ago by Emin Pasha. Its ferocity was just as much a myth as its habit of climbing with its back to the tree! In less than half-an-hour after its release from the basket in which it was brought to us it was eating out of our hands. We obtained later on a second living specimen of this hyrax, but both of them died before Hardy could take them with him to Europe. In the Lubefu River crocodiles are said to exist, but hippopotami are only to be found in it at its confluence with the Sankuru, for the current of the Lubefu is too strong for these animals; so strong indeed is the stream, and so narrow and winding its course, that a whale-boat, well-manned with experienced paddlers, takes nineteen days to ascend the river from Bena Dibele to the Government station of Lubefu, a distance of only about one hundred miles. In places the stream is so overhung by trees that it flows as through a tunnel beneath their intertwining branches. The road from Mokunji to the station of Lubefu crosses the river by one of those suspension bridges made of creepers (known to the Belgians as “monkey bridges”) which the Batetela are so skilful in building. The creepers are attached to trees on either bank, and high railings on each side of the tight-rope-like bridge prevent one from being hurled into the river when the structure sways beneath one’s weight.

During our stay at Mokunji we not only made extensive collections for the ethnographical department of the British Museum, but we were able to procure a number of human skulls for the Royal College of Surgeons. We experienced no difficulty in obtaining these, for the inhabitants did not hesitate to collect for us the skulls of those who had perished in the bush from the deadly sleeping sickness. When a person is known to have this terrible disease the Batetela expel him from the village, placing food at a certain spot each day until the fact that the food is not called for shows that the poor wretch’s sufferings are at an end. We have met several of these unfortunates when on the march, one of them a little girl in the last stage of the complaint, who presented a most pitiful spectacle, and filled us with horror at the thought of her terrible fate. But is not this primitive isolation, cruel as it may seem, the only possible way by which savages can combat the spread of sleeping sickness? The patient’s end must be horrible, that lonely death in the bush, but it may be the means of saving the lives of hundreds in the villages. The collecting of the skulls was the last piece of work that we did at Mokunji, for we were afraid that to mention such an idea as to purchase the bones of their dead might so offend the Batetela as to prevent them from imparting to us a lot of the information with regard to their manners and customs which we were so anxious to obtain. This, however, did not turn out to be the case; in fact the prices we paid for the skulls—after a large reward had been offered for the first one or two—were lower than those asked for many of the other things we purchased, so that we were enabled to send home quite a valuable series of them to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. Our ethnographical work having been completed as far as possible and our collections made, we packed up the specimens (now amounting to several hundred) and despatched them to the Sankuru on their way to Europe. We then prepared to follow them, intending to proceed to Batempa and thence descend the Sankuru to Lusambo. During our stay at Mokunji, Commandant Gustin, the Commissioner of the District of Lualaba-Kasai, had passed by on his way to his residence at Lusambo after an extended tour through the eastern portion of his district, and Torday was anxious to discuss with him one or two ethnographical subjects in which he was greatly interested. We therefore determined to stay for a few days at Lusambo. When we met the Commandant we laid before him the grievance of the natives of Osodu, and we had the satisfaction of being instrumental in the release of the father of our baby hosts, for the Commissioner considered that the chief of Osodu could be safely set at liberty upon the understanding that he must acknowledge the suzerainty of Jadi, which he was now ready to do.

[Illustration: SOUNDING THE SIGNALLING GONG.]

Once again our march was to be rendered interesting by rumours of wars, although, luckily for us, the trouble never reached the stage of actual hostilities. Jadi and Kasongo Batetela fell out over the suzerainty of two or three small villages situated upon their mutual frontier; and, as neither chief would give way nor appeal to the Government for arbitration, a breach of the peace seemed certain. Jadi beat his big war drum at Mokunji and sent messages by gong, signalling to the outlying villages to bid their warriors hold themselves in readiness to take the field. This signalling was especially interesting to us, in that it enabled us to see how perfectly a chief keeps in communication with his army by means of the signalling gong. This instrument, of which I give an illustration and of which specimens are now in the British Museum, is made from a solid block of wood, hollowed out with a primitive form of adze. It is hung round the drummer’s shoulder by a leather strap, and is thus easily portable, and can be used in directing military operations or for sending the chief’s orders while he is travelling. The words are transmitted by a series of beats, or rather sharp “taps,” of a couple of rubber-headed sticks. The sounds thus produced, though not very loud, are very penetrating, so that messages can be easily distinguished at a distance of several miles, and when passed on from one village to another (there are always plenty of people able to use the gong) can be sent all over the countryside in an incredibly short space of time. The perfection to which this system of signalling has been brought by the Batetela astonished us very much, and we put it to every test that we could think of. We gonged messages from the Kasai Company’s factory to Jadi’s village, always receiving a reply which indicated that our message had been correctly sent, and Torday and I, each accompanied by a signaller, on several occasions carried on conversations at a distance of over a quarter of a mile apart—far enough to test the efficacy of the system. Altogether the Batetela gong is one of the most remarkable instruments in Central Africa, and, where villages are fairly close together and so facilitate the transmission of messages, it could easily be made use of as a substitute to the telegraph lines, which, of course, have not yet made their appearance so far in the interior. But although Jadi (and for that matter Kasongo Batetela) had such perfect means of summoning their warriors and of directing the movements of the various contingents from outlying villages, their dispute came to an end without bloodshed. Jadi, the ex-soldier, the veteran of the Arab wars, the leader of so many warriors armed with guns—Jadi, the more powerful chief of the two, gave way. Why? Simply because his people, though in superior numbers, felt that they with their muzzle-loaders would be no match for Kasongo’s old warriors, who were renowned for their accuracy of aim with the poisoned arrow. The young Batetela loves to take the road with his gun (usually carried by his wife or child), and he uses the weapon too in hunting; but he realises the superiority of the veteran archer when it comes to the serious business of the battlefield. A good bow used by a man who has been brought up to its use since childhood is always better than an inferior muzzle-loader in the hands of a native whose ideas of shooting are usually extremely rudimentary. Accordingly, the more primitive tribes are by no means necessarily so easy to tackle as their neighbours who have attained that state of “civilisation” which includes a gun as one of its outward signs. Our journey to the Sankuru, therefore, passed off without incident, and we reached Batampa well pleased with the result of our researches among the Batetela and with the collections we had made for the British Museum. We spent only a few days in the Kasai Company’s factory by the riverside, and as soon as our old friend the _Velde_ appeared, bringing stores and a European mail from Dima, we embarked in her and departed for Lusambo at noon one day in the end of February 1908.