CHAPTER VII

UP THE KWILU RIVER

A stay of about ten days in Dima, coupled with the luxury of regular meals and a plentiful supply of fresh vegetables, soon put us upon the highroad to recovery from the feeling of lassitude naturally resulting from the period of semi-starvation through which we had passed at the Mushenge, and the return to strength, together with the knowledge that we were about to embark upon an interesting and possibly exciting journey, soon filled us with eagerness to be up and doing. We accordingly hurried forward the packing and despatch of a goodly number of cases for the British Museum, and rearranged the provisions which had been waiting for us in Dima, and were still in perfect condition, ready for a start to the Kwilu. This time we included in our baggage a box of toys which had recently arrived from Europe. Among these were “Zulu” dolls with movable arms and legs, golliwog dolls, china animals, and last, but not least, two clockwork elephants which would walk and move their trunks; one of these two latter was destined to play an important part in our passage from the Kwilu to the Kasai. Dima itself, as I have already mentioned, had considerably improved since our arrival in November 1907. The Government had recently come to the conclusion that the place was sufficiently important to render the establishment of a post-office desirable, and the official in charge of it, a native of Lagos, arrived during our stay there. This was of considerable convenience to us, as we were able, with some frequency, to replenish our stock of stamps and also to despatch registered letters, containing the ethnographical information collected, far more easily than was the case when we had to send all such to Leopoldville for registration. During this visit to Dima we saw a great deal of Colonel Chaltin, who showed us great hospitality. With his wide experience of life in almost every part of the Congo State, he had naturally much information to impart concerning the opening up of many districts, of the earlier days of the State, and particularly of the Arab wars, in which he had served with much distinction, and in which he had been seriously wounded. The Colonel, however, was by no means ready to tell stories of the past or to relate his own experiences upon his expedition to the Nile at the time of the Mahdist rising, when directly asked to do so; often, however, the mention of some place or of some man’s name would recall old memories to him and lead him to recount some of his adventures. He has a splendid way of telling his stories, simply yet clearly, and with so much feeling that one can almost imagine oneself taking part in the stirring incidents which he describes. It is far from my purpose to relate any of his stories here; we suggested to him that he should some day publish an account of what he has done and seen. Should he not do so the history of the advance of European influence in Central Africa will lose a most important chapter, for few men have travelled so widely in the Congo as Colonel Chaltin, and very few men are now living who have personally known, as he has, so many of the early pioneers. Having been quartered upon the Nile, the Colonel has met many British officers, travellers, and officials, of whose exploits he has much to tell, and among whom he has many friends. The men who served in the Congo in the early nineties have many of them succumbed to the climatic conditions and the privations which their work entailed; in fact, when, in recalling his adventures in the past, the Colonel mentioned names of Europeans quite eight times out of ten, he would remark parenthetically, “he is dead now.” In the old days the death-rate among the Europeans must have been far greater than it is now, for they had none of the advantages of regular steamship service nor the many little luxuries and conveniences in the way of stores and equipment which now render the life of an African traveller a comparatively easy one. One important point I noticed when Colonel Chaltin was relating his experiences, upon almost every occasion, and they were many, when he mentioned a deed performed by some native soldier, he gave not only the rank, but also the name and tribe of the man; it seems to me that to be served well by African natives, were one to be an officer in command of troops or merely a traveller, it is essential that one should personally know and be known by one’s men. The importance of this is, I have thought, often overlooked.

Our plans for the remainder of our journey now began to take a definite shape. Before recommencing our ethnographical work we decided to take a three weeks’ rest cure in the form of shooting on the lower Kwilu; after this we should ascend that river as far as Kikwit. At Dima we met an agent of the Kasai Company named M. Gentil, who had recently founded a factory called Kandale upon the upper Kwilu, about six days south-east of Kikwit. He had travelled a good distance to the south of his post, and had produced some excellent plane-table maps of his region. In the course of his wanderings in the south he had come into contact with a number of Badjok traders from near the Angola frontier with whom he had established most friendly relations. Some of these people had informed him that they were in the habit of proceeding to the upper Kasai to Mai Monene, and also further north in the direction of Bena Makima and Luebo, the point at which we hoped to end our overland journey; and he was of the opinion that should we succeed in meeting with a party of these people travelling eastwards we should have little difficulty in persuading them to take us across the country of the Bakongo and Bashilele; and as he knew it always suited the purpose of the Badjok to remain on friendly terms with the tribes whose country they passed through, he considered that there would be little risk in such an undertaking. He assured us that he had found the natives around Kandale quite peaceful, and that he had much enjoyed his life among them. The country, he said, was healthy, consisting of great open plains, and he had no difficulty at all in supplying his factory with food. In short, he believed that we should reach the Kasai with few difficulties, and little if any danger.

These opinions, however, were not shared by one or two men of considerable experience; they asserted that it would be madness to attempt the passage of the unknown country between the Loange and the Kasai without an armed escort consisting of natives well used to the service of the white man, and a very considerable number of porters to be recruited preferably from among the people from the upper Kasai or Sankuru. Such men, they said, could easily be found, many of them would be accustomed to the use of muzzle-loading guns, and therefore would be able to handle our Albini rifles, in case of attack, more effectually than the primitive people of the Kwilu; and finally, as they would be working at a great distance from their homes, they would be unlikely to desert for fear of the surrounding tribes with whom they would have nothing in common. The men who put forward these arguments had some of them resided upon the upper Kasai in the country of the warlike Zappo Zap or of the Bena Lulua, who though under-sized, weakly-looking people, are noted for their courage. Good men selected from one of these two tribes might very likely have formed a useful escort in the event of any hostilities, but it is more than probable that their domineering ways would have caused us considerable difficulty when travelling among the people of the Kwilu; and of course it was most important for us to gain the friendship of the local natives wherever we went. Besides this, it would have been impossible to get such picked men together, and had we decided to take with us an escort and porters of the people of the Kasai, we should have had to be content with the sweepings of the Baluba workmen whose demerits I have discussed before.

Torday, from his previous wanderings among them, knew well the people of Kwilu; he liked them, and, which is more important, those he had met liked him. He was, therefore, sure of being able to get as many men as he wanted from villages which he had previously known. In reply to the statement that the Kwilu country was dangerous, more white men having been killed there than in any other part of the Kasai district, he pointed out that as often as not the cause of the trouble had been the white man’s Baluba followers, and that in such fighting as had occurred in the Kwilu the Baluba had almost invariably run away, leaving their master to be defended by the local natives. In one instance a factory had been attacked and the Baluba had bolted, when a number of local Bayanzi workmen employed in the post had repulsed the attack, armed with nothing but their machettes or long knives. No one, I think, casts a slur upon the courage of the natives of the Kwilu. In addition to being brave, Torday knew them to be just as quiet and friendly when staying in the villages of another tribe as the Baluba are domineering and offensive, therefore he decided to be accompanied only by natives of the Kwilu. We did not succeed, at this time, in convincing the supporters of the Baluba. “You will never get across without an escort from the Kasai,” they said. “We shall certainly have trouble if we take any Baluba,” was the reply. Another of our plans was regarded as foolish in the extreme by the pessimists. Our ten Albini rifles, which up to this moment had remained in the packing in which they had come from Europe, and which had never accompanied us upon our journeys, were packed with the ninety rounds of ammunition, which was all we had, in two stout wooden cases, each forming a load for two men. It was considered that the weapons would not be sufficiently get-at-able in case of need, but we were convinced that the need for them would be far less likely to arise if the natives did not know that we were travelling through their country more or less equipped for war, and until almost the end of our journey even our own men, who daily carried the boxes, had no idea what they contained. The plans we ultimately formed for our journey were briefly as follows: We were to ascend the Kwilu River as far as a village named M’Bei on the right bank, not far from the spot where the Inzia flows into the Kwilu; from here we were to proceed up the Kwilu to Kikwit, leaving a message at the Kasai Company’s factory of Luano (about half-way to Kikwit) that Torday would be requiring a few men to accompany him upon our journey. Torday knew well the natives in the vicinity of Luano, and he was convinced that should they become aware that we were waiting at Kikwit for porters, a large number of them (many more than we should require) would immediately volunteer for service, and go up to Kikwit to join us next time the Company’s steamer passed.

At Kikwit Torday would be able to renew his acquaintance with the southern Bambala people, among whom he had previously spent a considerable time, and, as soon as the men from Luano joined us, we were to go on to the factory of Athenes to the south-south-east, near the head waters of the Kancha River. In the country round Athenes we should have an opportunity of studying the Babunda tribe and the neighbouring Bapinji, and we might get some information about the Hungarian explorer, Magyar, who lost his life about fifty years ago in the country of the Babunda, and possibly recover some of his records. From Athenes we were to proceed either to Kandale, as had been suggested by M. Gentil, or to the factory of Dumba upon the Lubue River, from either of which places we could commence our final journey towards the Kasai. With this end in view we sent on a good supply of provisions to Dumba, where we could pick them up, or whence they could readily be sent to Kandale. The number of permanent porters who were to be recruited at Luano was not to exceed twenty-five. Considering that we had a large number of provisions and a good deal of impedimenta in the way of camp equipment, trade goods, &c., to carry with us, this number may seem ridiculously small, but as we knew we were attempting to enter a country of very suspicious and probably hostile people, we knew that it would be useless to try to penetrate that country with a large following of men, as any such attempt would only be regarded by the natives as a warlike invasion of their territory; therefore we decided to take just sufficient men to carry the bare necessities of life in case we were forced to retreat hurriedly from the country, and to rely entirely upon establishing such friendly relations with the natives as to enable us to obtain local porters to carry us from village to village. Of personal servants we had but two, our cook Luchima, who was at this time in a very poor state of health, and my boy Sam. Among the Bambala people we intended to obtain another boy or two, of whom or of whose parents Torday had known something in the past.

We were to start from Dima on the 24th January on board the Company’s steamer _St. Antoine_, and had slept the night of the 23rd on board. On the afternoon of the 23rd, however, a Government steamer descending the Kasai had landed a passenger suffering from a bad attack of black-water fever, to be looked after by the Company’s doctor resident at Dima. In the night he died, and early next morning the _St. Antoine_ was sent to fetch the Jesuit missionary from Wombali to perform the burial service. The funeral took place at two o’clock in the afternoon; the coffin, carried by a number of retired soldiers now working at Dima and preceded by a bugler, was borne to the little cemetery just outside the post. The priest was accompanied by diminutive black acolytes clothed in red, their ebony faces gleaming as the result of an unwonted application of soap. The service was short, and at the conclusion of it Colonel Chaltin, who acted as chief mourner, made a brief speech. The unfortunate officer had been landed at Dima in an absolutely hopeless condition, and had died without any one he knew beside him. Next morning, however, when viewing the body, one of the Company’s agents resident in Dima recognised the face of a schoolfellow. As soon as possible after the ceremony we boarded the steamer, accompanied by the priest, and started off for Wombali. At its mouth, where it is some five hundred yards wide, the Kwango flows through low lying country, its right bank bordered by papyrus swamps and marshes which stretch away eastwards to the forest. The left bank is slightly less swampy than the right, and upon this shore, some two miles from the mouth, is situated the Jesuit mission of Wombali. As it was already late the steamer was to stop for the night at the mission, and the priest in charge, Father Van Tilborg, asked the captain and ourselves to dine with him on shore. As soon as the ship was made fast Torday and I went ashore with the priest, taking with us our shot guns in the hope of coming across some duck, which are numerous in the neighbourhood. Accompanied by one of the lay brothers, a farmer who superintended the plantations at Wombali and instructed the natives of the mission in agriculture, we proceeded about a mile inland to some damp low-lying fields whither the duck return every evening from the sandbanks of the river. We saw a fair number of ducks, but they, perceiving us, did not give us a chance to shoot, and having secured a francolin or two we returned to the mission just as the sun was setting. The house in which the missionaries lived at the time of our visit was an old one made of plaster, but a new house of brick was in course of construction under the guidance of the other lay brother, who had been educated as a builder. A neat brick chapel has already been erected. As the native population of Wombali is by no means dense, the missionaries have extended the field of their labours some distance up the Kwilu and Inzia rivers, at various places on the shores of which they have established _fermes chapelles_, each one looked after by a Christian native who has been educated by the Jesuit missionaries. In these _fermes chapelles_ the younger children receive their earliest instructions at the hands of the catechist, and when they have learnt as much as he can teach them they are passed on to Wombali to complete their education. The missionaries possess a small steamer, by means of which Father Van Tilborg and his two subordinates frequently visit these detached posts. The whole of the Jesuit missionary enterprise in this region is, I understand, under the control of the Jesuit headquarters of Kisantu, on the railway between Stanley Pool and the coast. After an excellent dinner the conversation turned upon our proposed shooting trip, and after admiring one or two fine buffalo skulls hanging up on the verandah, we asked the missionaries for any information they could give us with regard to the haunts of the buffalo, elephants, and other animals that we should be likely to meet with. Upon hearing that we intended to stay at M’Bei, the farmer informed us that he had heard that game was plentiful there, but that he knew from personal experience that buffalo were to be met with in large numbers near the _ferme chapelle_ of Pana, some few miles higher up the Kwilu; here, too, he informed us, elephants are frequently to be seen, and such small antelopes as exist in this part of Africa are also to be found in fair numbers. Father Van Tilborg kindly asked us to make what use we liked of the _ferme chapelle_, and to request the catechist and the children there to show us the haunts of the game, which he was confident they would be well able to do. We determined, therefore, to stop at M’Bei on the morrow and try our luck, and to proceed to Pana by the next steamer should we not be enjoying sufficient sport at M’Bei.

The Kwango, up to the point where it is joined by its tributary the Kwilu, maintains a width of about six hundred yards, flowing through level plains, often swampy in the immediate vicinity of the river. The trade upon the Kwango River itself, which does not fall within the concession of the Kasai Company, is carried on by the Credit Commercial Company, which has one factory on the right bank but a short distance above Wombali. Up to its confluence with the Inzia the Kwilu is but little narrower than the Kwango. It flows through a country consisting of great grassy plains, interspersed with a fair amount of woodland, very much resembling, in the distance, a view over an English woodland country, the woods in no case being sufficiently continuous to be dignified with the name of forest. For many miles up the river from its mouth the banks are not even fringed with trees, and higher up still, even near to its tributary the Kwengo, frequent gaps in the narrow forest belt enable one to see from the deck of a steamer the real open nature of the country. A recent traveller has described the basin of the Kwilu as one great virgin forest. A greater mistake could not possibly be made. In no case does the forest belt exceed a width of about twenty-five miles, and it is rarely more than a mile or two from the water’s edge to the plains. In many maps this river is marked “Kwilu,” or “Djuma”; but although Torday during his previous journeys in this district has constantly inquired of the natives what they call the river, and during our sojourn there we many times repeated the question, no native with whom we came into contact had ever heard of the second name. Many people, however, called it “Kilu.”

We left Wombali early in the morning, and turning up the mouth of the Kwilu we proceeded on our way to M’Bei. There are a considerable number of sandbanks, with their usual complement of crocodiles and aquatic birds, and wooded islands in this part of the river, and in the stiller water among these small herds of hippopotami were to be seen lying almost submerged, waiting till the cool of the evening should tempt them to their feeding grounds upon the banks. Although we rarely saw a village there were plenty of signs of human life, groups of canoes moored by the bank, fish traps and spear traps for hippopotami were numerous, and here and there small quantities of wood chopped up into lengths suitable for burning on the steamer stood in conspicuous places where they would catch the captain’s eye. As a rule there would be no natives watching over these; the people in this part of the world are quite content to cut wood and leave it there for the captain of the passing steamer to take, trusting him to leave the payment for it upon the spot. In this way the Kwilu steamers have often habitually taken fuel at certain spots without ever seeing the people who supply it. The captains, of course, must have been scrupulously honest in paying for what they took or the natives would discontinue the supply. As a rule, wood is obtained at the _fermes chapelle_ of the Jesuit mission. I believe that the Company has made an agreement with the missionaries to take their wood in preference to any other, for the priests realise that the children in their outposts have very little to do to keep their plantations in order, and are accordingly glad for them to have the occupation of felling and chopping up the wood.

Our captain did not know exactly where the village of M’Bei was situated, but one of the helmsmen, who was a native of the country, undertook to find the spot. On our arrival, however, we found that the right bank of the river, upon which the village was situated, was unapproachable owing to the shallow water; we therefore took the advice given us at Wombali and continued our journey, stopping next day at Pana. We passed the night alongside a low-lying plain on the right bank, in the midst of which was situated a small village of the Bayanzi; this we visited, and made inquiries as to the game in the country. Buffalo, we were told, were very numerous here, and elephants frequently visited the plain in which the village stood; indeed, we ourselves saw their tracks. The natives here were confident that we could not do better than proceed to Pana, where they said we should find abundance of game. The following afternoon we passed the mouth of the Inzia. Upon this river are situated several factories belonging to the Kasai Company, and a good deal of rubber and ivory is exported from it. Although the stream is narrow, only some one hundred and fifty yards wide at the mouth, there is at all times of the year a sufficient depth of water to admit of the passage of a small steamer. The banks of the Kwilu just above the Inzia rise abruptly from the water to a height of some fifty feet, and a few miles above the confluence, on the right shore of the Kwilu, stands the Government post of Pana. Until quite recently no troops had been stationed in this district, but several of its agents having been murdered, the Kasai Company prevailed upon the Government to establish a garrison there, paying, I understand, a large amount yearly for this protection, which one would have thought it was the duty of the Government to supply, especially when one considers the vast amount paid annually by the Company in taxes, export duties, &c. At the time we passed both the commandant in command of the station and his subordinate, a white N.C.O., were absent upon a long journey to the south, so we did not go ashore, but continued our journey for about a mile to the _ferme chapelle_ of Pana, which lies on the opposite shore. The place consists of a group of plaster huts forming three sides of a square situated upon the bank, which here rises to a height of some twenty-five feet above the water. At the sound of the steamer’s whistle all the inhabitants, from the catechist and his wife down to the youngest child, aged probably about three, hurried down to the water’s edge. Visitors are rare at Pana; in fact, I very much doubt if any one except the missionaries have ever slept there before: accordingly the removal of our belongings from the steamer occasioned no little excitement among the children. The catechist hastened forward to greet us; he was attired in a pair of white duck trousers, a frock coat, and a grey felt hat; he was polite, rather too polite, and, although his appearance suggested the utmost respectability, we did not anticipate that we should obtain much sport through any assistance of his. He had a smugness of manner which led us to imagine at once that here was one of those natives who, in becoming a Christian, had forgotten that he was primarily a man, and we felt that this was the last person in the world with whom one could wish to hunt dangerous game. Subsequent events, however, proved to us how false the hastily-formed opinion was.

The _ferme chapelle_ at Pana consists of a plaster building used both as a schoolroom and a chapel, and, with one or two small huts, forms one side of the post. Opposite to this is situated the house of the catechist, while between the two, lying some fifty yards back from the bank, is a row of huts inhabited by the children resident at the mission; there are one or two other houses for the children lying just outside the three sides of a rectangle thus formed. The catechist, who rejoices in the name of Louis, and his wife Marie are in command of the post, sharing the labours of teaching, and superintending the cultivation of crops and instructing the very small children, some of whom cannot exceed three years of age, in the rudiments of cooking and other household duties. There are not many children actually resident in the mission—at the outside they cannot exceed twenty—but there are a fair number of Bayanzi villages scattered about in the neighbourhood, from which the children arrive early in the morning, returning home at sunset. Short services are held two or three times a day, the congregation being summoned by the beating of an old tin, for the _ferme chapelle_ of Pana cannot yet boast of a bell. After the early morning service the children receive instruction in the principles of the Roman Catholic faith, while a few of the elder ones, who have commenced learning to read and write, spend some time sitting about with pencil and paper copying down the alphabet and short sentences from a very elementary “reader,” their work being overlooked by Louis when his class teaching is at an end. In the afternoon all the children work in the fields, or, if a steamer is expected, fell and cut up timber ready for fuel. Louis appeared to us to fulfil his task remarkably well. I do not know exactly what his qualifications as a teacher were, but he certainly kept his post neat and tidy and maintained perfect order amongst his pupils, to whom I think he was greatly attached, and who certainly seemed devoted to him.

[Illustration: A CHILD FROM THE MISSION AT PANA.]

[Illustration: BOS CAFFER SIMPSONI: A COW.]

We had brought with us from Dima a native, who had been employed there as a buffalo hunter, to act as tracker and gun-bearer. With this man, and a child or two from the mission, I went out on the evening of our arrival to have a look round for tracks of buffalo, which were said to come close up to the post after nightfall, and, sure enough, within five hundred yards of the houses we came upon the spoor of a herd of some half-dozen of these beasts which clearly showed that they had been feeding upon the borders of the plantation. Indeed, Louis had found it necessary to have a rough fence erected beside his fields to keep the animals out. Next morning, accompanied by the tracker and two boys of about twelve and fourteen years of age, I attempted to work up to this herd as they wallowed in the forest swamp close by the river bank, half a mile or so below the post. The amount of water in the swamp, and frequent slipping about upon submerged sticks as we followed the path by which the buffaloes had gone, caused us to make so much noise as to disturb the animals before I could get a shot, and I returned to Pana unsuccessful. One thing, however, about this preliminary effort was satisfactory. I had found out that, although the tracker from Dima was undoubtedly good at his job, the two mission children were in no way his inferiors at finding out and following up tracks, and that, despite their youth, they had not the slightest hesitation in entering the thick cover where the beasts were known to be, in addition to which, of course, they possessed an excellent knowledge of the country round, and were evidently as keen as I was upon the business. When I returned I found that Louis had suggested to Torday that that evening we might try for a shot near the post by moonlight, for the moon was now full. This we decided to do, and one or two children were posted in the plantations to listen for the approach of the beasts. Just as we had finished dinner, the catechist came to say that the animals had been heard. When we turned to look at him our surprise was great. The white trousers, frock coat and grey felt hat had disappeared; the smug schoolmaster, to whom we had taken an instinctive dislike on the previous day, was transformed into a native hunter, who, clad only in a very scanty loin cloth and grasping a light spear, was eagerly beckoning us to follow him. We started off at once, but although we were able to get quite close to the animals we could never see them. The catechist proved himself to be an excellent stalker, as were also the one or two children who accompanied him. We learned subsequently that this man would frequently chase the buffaloes out of the plantations at night, and that on one occasion during the dry season when some elephants had threatened his crops he and a few of his elder pupils had succeeded in driving them away. On one or two occasions he accompanied us to look for buffalo by night, and I am sure that he would have taken part in our shooting expeditions by daylight to the detriment of his children’s studies, had he not been laid up with a bad attack of fever during the greater part of our stay at Pana. These evenings spent with him in the bush completely altered the opinion we had at first formed of the man. We never succeeded in obtaining a beast from the herd which fed so close to the mission; the passage of the children to and from the villages at sunrise and sunset prevented their leaving the forest during the hours of daylight, but with the buffaloes further to the west we were more fortunate.

[Illustration: AN INCIDENT AT PANA.]

[Illustration: BOS CAFFER SIMPSONI: OUR BEST BULL.]

The country between the Kwilu and the Inzia at this point consists of gently undulating grassy plains, entirely devoid of bushes, in which are situated many pools and swamps where buffalo drink and linger long after sunrise to crop the sweet grass. There is also a good deal of woodland such as I have described before, consisting rather of small dense covers than of continuous forest, parts of which are usually swampy, and here the beasts wallow in the shade during the fierce midday heat. The soil of the plains is sandy and the grass is rarely very thick, resembling a thin English crop of hay about five feet high. We usually had to go some distance towards the Inzia before we found our buffalo, the likely spots being shown to us by children from the mission. There is another _ferme chapelle_ on the Inzia, about five hours’ march from Pana, and as the children from Pana frequently visit it, they had often seen buffalo on the way and were consequently able to take us to their favourite feeding grounds. I do not think that we ever went out with these children without finding a beast of some sort. We saw buffaloes in herds numbering from three to fifteen heads, and have counted as many as twenty-seven in one day. To find them, however, one must leave Pana long before daylight, or the increasing heat of the sun will have driven them into the forest swamps before one reaches the pastures. I think that the buffalo in this part of the world are larger than those I had come into contact with near the Mushenge and those whose tracks I saw in the equatorial forest. They also seem to me to be considerably darker than those around the Mushenge. This applies not only to the aged bulls, some of which are almost black, but also to the adult cows, which are of a dark chocolate-brown colour all over. Quite half the animals in any given herd on the Kwilu would be as dark or darker than the bull I have seen east of the Kasai. The horns, too, of both bulls and cows appear to be larger, as a rule, than the specimens I had previously seen. We secured some really fine specimens of both male and female of the buffaloes around Pana, and Mr. Lyddekker, to whom we submitted them, has found that they represent a species of small buffalo hitherto unknown to science, which he has described under the name of _bos caffer simpsoni_. A mounted head of a female, the sex which displays the most marked difference in colouring from the buffaloes around the Mushenge, is now exhibited in the Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road. As I have already remarked in Chapter V., I cannot help thinking that there must at least be three species of buffalo in the parts of the Kasai district we visited: the buffalo of the Kwilu, that of the Mushenge, and the small animals of the southern portion of the equatorial forest. Whether or not the buffaloes I shot during my trip from the Mushenge are really of the _bos caffer nanus_ variety I am not in a position to state, for their head skins were unfortunately spoilt by the climate, but I know that the males of that district are darker in colour than the mounted specimen of _nanus_ from Nigeria exhibited in the Natural History Museum, whereas the females appear to be of about the same colour but rather larger than the female there shown. Possibly, therefore, the buffaloes from the country around the Mushenge may constitute a different species, as may those of the great forest. I have no right to advance any theory with regard to these latter for, as I have said, I never set eyes on one of them; but to judge by their tracks they appear to be smaller than either of the buffaloes I shot. I was told by a Belgian gentleman who has done a good deal of shooting that two kinds of buffalo exist near Kanda-Kanda, where, I suppose, the dwarf buffalo may be merging into the well-known “Cape” species, but I saw no horns from this part of Africa. Although the buffalo from the Kwilu lacks the enormous strength of his cousin the Cape buffalo, he is nevertheless very tenacious of life, and when wounded is capable of making a most vicious and determined charge. Although I used a powerful rifle I, on one occasion, only just managed to stop the rush of an animal which had previously received two bullets so placed that the wounds that they inflicted must have proved fatal in a few moments. Torday also had an experience with one which might have ended in an accident. We had been trying to secure a couple of animals for the steamer, which was expected that evening, to carry on to Dima. We came across a herd, and singling out the biggest beast I fired at him with my Express; on being struck, the animal turned off into a very small but dense cover, the rest of the herd making off across the plain. When we reached the edge of the little wood in which the wounded animal was, we could hear the beast giving vent to those moaning sounds which a buffalo frequently makes when at the point of death, and which, I think, must always make the sportsman half regret that he had not stayed his hand. Concluding that it would be only a few minutes before the end came, Torday whispered to me to hurry on after the herd with one child from the mission in the hope of securing a second beast, while he waited with another child until the animal was dead. Accordingly I followed the animals across the plain, but being unable to come up with them I returned to Torday, who had waited outside the wood until the moaning had ceased, and then, concluding that the animal was dead, he had gone round to the other side of the cover to take a look at it. He was armed with his 256 Mannlicher, for which he had but two cartridges left. Now if one attempts to load a Mannlicher with a clip containing but two cartridges there is often a chance that the action of the rifle will jam after the first shot has been fired when endeavouring to insert the second cartridge into the chamber, therefore Torday loaded one cartridge by hand and gave the second one to the small boy who accompanied him, telling him to follow closely on his heels, and thrust the cartridge into his hand should he have to fire a shot and reach back for it. All was silent as he entered the wood. Going on a few yards he made out the form of the buffalo lying down; he was not sure if it was dead, so he fired at it in the hope of finishing it off; on being struck the animal slowly rose to its feet and turned to face him. It was but a very few yards distant; Torday put his hand back for the spare cartridge, and the little Bayanzi handed it to him as coolly as if there were no dangerous beasts within twenty miles of him. With this shot Torday finished off the buffalo. This is but one example out of many that came to our notice of the great courage and coolness which the mission children displayed in hunting the buffalo with us. If it requires nerve to follow the wounded animals into the dense forest when armed with a good rifle, I always think that it must require at least twice as much to go in armed with nothing at all, relying solely on another man’s accuracy of aim. I will not weary the reader with the details of our daily hunting experiences; suffice it to say that we kept ourselves and the mission children supplied with fresh meat, and secured some excellent heads of buffalo. We were also able to add duiker and a reed buck (which are by no means common here) to our bag, while in the evenings, if we cared to take a stroll for an hour or so round the post, we could provide for our supper with francolins or guinea-fowls. We were at Pana during the rainy season, and, as at this time there is a great deal of water in the woods inland, elephants do not, as a rule, find it necessary to come down to the Kwilu to drink; in the dry season, however, when their favourite swamps have dried up, the animals are often to be seen quite close to the _ferme chapelle_. We stayed nearly three weeks at Pana, spending the whole of our time in hunting, and then prepared to go on up river when the steamer should pass our camp on its way to Kikwit.

[Illustration: CUTTING UP A BUFFALO AT PANA.]

[Illustration: A HIPPOPOTAMUS FROM THE KWILU.]

Upon the arrival of the _St. Antoine_ we left the little mission after spending there perhaps the pleasantest time we enjoyed during the whole of our journey, and proceeded up the Kwilu to Luano, among the natives from which neighbourhood Torday intended to recruit our porters. The northern Bambala from the country around Luano are born farmers, and it is mainly from their extensive plantations that the large quantity of food-stuffs required at Dima is brought down the river every ten days on board the _St. Antoine_. They are cannibals, but unlike the fierce and treacherous Bankutu of the great forest, whose terrible man-eating propensities I have already described, they only partake of human flesh at rare intervals upon the occasion of some ceremony, and they never deliberately hunt men to serve as food. As my narrative of our wanderings in the unknown country will show, these Bambala are as quiet and peaceable a people as one could wish for to accompany one upon a journey in the course of which it is absolutely necessary to maintain friendly relations with the natives through whose villages one passes. A youth came up to Torday as soon as we landed at Luano and inquired if it was true that he was undertaking a journey and would be requiring porters, and upon Torday replying in the affirmative he at once announced his intention of accompanying us. Torday refused his services, for he considered that the lad was not sufficiently strong for the work which lay before us, and we saw no more of him that evening. Next morning, however, after our steamer had started we found him seated with the crew, having firmly determined to accompany us whether we liked it or not. After this we could not very well send him back, so we enlisted this lad, Moamba, as a member of our expedition. We had left a message for the people around Luano that we should require about twenty men to accompany us, and we had requested the Kasai Company’s agent to tell any one who should volunteer for such service that they might come on by the next steamer and join us at Kikwit, where we intended staying a few days amongst their kinsmen the southern Bambala. Upon the third day after leaving Luano we arrived at Kikwit; and here I was immediately struck by the personal appearance of the natives, who are quite unlike any I have previously seen. They cover themselves—hair, body and loin-cloth,—with a reddish-coloured clay which, although it may seem disgusting to European ideas of cleanliness, is so neatly and so regularly applied that one soon ceases to regard the custom as dirty. They are particularly careful about the dressing of their hair, which is rolled up into plaits caked with clay running backwards from the forehead, in which they often fix little brass-headed nails purchased from the white man. These plaits hang like tails behind the neck, and it is by no means uncommon to see a man wearing a skewer in one of them, so that it sticks out behind him at right angles to his neck. These southern Bambala are extraordinarily vain people, and upon several occasions Torday has had two of them come to him to settle a dispute as to which of them was the better looking, a rather difficult question to decide, for, had he shown any preference, the man whose appearance had been thus insulted would have been mortally offended.

We did not do any serious ethnographical work among the Bambala, for Torday had already made a detailed study of their manners and customs, but we paid several visits to their beautiful villages, with their rectangular grass-built huts dotted about under the shade of the palm-trees, and I had ample opportunity of making the acquaintance of many natives who came in to Kikwit to see Torday, who during his previous stay in the country had evidently made himself extremely popular. Literally hundreds of men turned up to talk to him, and I am in no way exaggerating when I say that two or three whole villages offered to escort us to the Kasai. This struck Torday as rather remarkable, for the Bambala had always been averse to travelling, and it is perhaps a sign that the arrival of the European has given the natives a desire to see more of the world than they cared to do when in a more primitive state.

The Bambala are really good singers, and it is very striking to hear a number of them singing, in harmony, a chant composed in honour of the white man to whom it is sung. Whenever a party of porters arrives to carry loads they always sing in this way, and their well-groomed persons, their smiling countenances and their songs combine to make one think that the Bambala must be a singularly happy and contented race. There are two rather curious musical instruments in use among these people. One is a nose flute. Ordinary wooden flutes played with the mouth are used by the boys, but the girls perform upon a flute which is played by the nose. Needless to say this latter flute does not produce much melody. The other curious instrument, and one which is found among several of the peoples visited, is the friction drum. This consists of a cylinder of wood covered at one end with leather; through this leather is passed a stick running through the wooden cylinder, so fastened that it can be moved an inch or two, to and fro through the leather. Having heated the membrane of the drum to draw it tight, the stick is vigorously rubbed with wet leaves and it produces a weird growling noise which can be heard at a great distance, and which has earned for the friction drum among some tribes the title of the “village leopard.” Torday has placed specimens of this instrument, collected in various localities, and also of the nose flute in the British Museum.

[Illustration: A BAMBALA GIRL PLAYING A NOSE FLUTE.]

[Illustration: A BAMBALA BOY WITH AN ORDINARY FLUTE.]

Like their cousins from Luano the Bambala around Kikwit are very peaceable and are chivalrous even in their methods of war. They have a curious habit of holding a sort of tournament, a different affair to serious warfare. Should two villages have a dispute a day and place is appointed for a battle. The bush is cleared to give a fair and open field, and the warriors of each side turn out to settle the matter in the lists. Torday has witnessed some of these encounters. The proceedings commence with a good deal of bombastic speech, and the champions of either village hurl insults at the heads of their opponents. “Ah, you, there, with the ugly face, I’ll give you something in a minute,” and other similar remarks are bandied about. Then the arrows begin to fly (at very long ranges) and the battle is in full swing. Very little damage is done in these encounters. Occasionally one or more of the warriors receive scratches, but it is very rare for any one to be seriously hurt, and at the conclusion of the engagement, that is to say when the combatants are weary, there is no ill-feeling between the opposing sides. If a man should happen to be killed the affair becomes much more serious and will perhaps develop into a serious war, in which the conflicting armies will attack one another whenever they meet, and which will certainly be stubbornly fought out with considerable losses on either side.

The gentle, cheery, happy-go-lucky Bambala are the only people we met with among whom such feats of arms as these tournaments take place. Although a more friendly and pleasant people to deal with than the Bambala it would be difficult to imagine, they have a besetting sin—that of gambling. At all hours of the day groups of men may be seen squatting on the ground in the village street playing a game more or less closely resembling dice, in which small pieces of ivory are shaken up in a cup and thrown. The stakes are often high, so high that a man will sometimes lose not only the whole of his property and his wives but even his own liberty, becoming the slave of the winner. It is a pity that this vice should have such a hold upon the Bambala, who are in every other respect a delightful, and, furthermore, a promising people; but gambling is their curse, as hemp smoking is the curse of the Batetela. During the few days we spent at Kikwit we engaged a few servants locally, and enlisted some of the northern Bambala who came on by the steamer from Luano to volunteer for service with us. As I shall have to say something of our men and their behaviour during our journey from the Loange to the Kasai, I may here give some description of the people who constituted our party.

[Illustration: THE FRICTION-DRUM.]

[Illustration: BAMBALA GAMBLING.]

My little Baluba boy, Sam, had now become the major-domo of our servants, and since the departure of Jones he had been the only native regularly in our employ with the exception of our cook. Our cook, Luchima, who had served us faithfully and well during the whole of our journey up to this time, was taken so ill at Kikwit that it became apparent that he would be quite unfit for the hard work of marching by day and attending to his other duties in the evenings for many months to come. We therefore determined that he should return by steamer to Dima, and thence be conveyed to his home at Batempa, and arranged for another cook to be sent on to us from Dima, where there are always large numbers of servants of all kinds waiting to obtain employment. This man, Mabruki, was really an Akela, but in his early youth he had been sold as a slave to the Batetela, and to all intents and purposes belonged to this latter tribe. He was by no means an ideal cook, and, unfortunately, his health broke down just when we most needed every man that we could obtain. Torday engaged as “boy” a very small member of the Bayanzi tribe, who could not have been more than eight years old at the most. This child, Buya, was to learn his duties from Sam, and he displayed an enthusiasm for his work and an intelligence which showed that in time he would become a most valuable servant; but at the time when he entered our employ he was absolutely ignorant of the white man and his ways, and thereby caused us sometimes no little amusement. He used to linger much longer than was necessary in Torday’s tent every morning when making the bed, and we discovered he used to spend many happy minutes in admiring his countenance in Torday’s shaving-glass, an object the like of which he had never seen before. I remember, too, that he was always getting lost during our stay in Kikwit, for frequently when we sent him upon an errand he would find something going on in the factory which amused or interested him, and he would forget to come back after delivering his message. All the same he was extremely useful and absolutely honest, the only thing that we ever found him to steal being the dog’s dinner; for although he had plenty to eat himself, being a Bayanzi, and therefore gluttonous, he could not resist the temptation to purloin a piece of meat. We also engaged another youth of about twelve years of age, named Benga. This lad was rather a useless person, but he used to amuse us by his frequent disputes with Buya. The Bayanzi tribe are cannibals; the Bapende, to which Benga belonged, are not; and we once overheard the following conversation on the subject of cannibalism. “You Bapende,” scornfully remarked Buya, “you kill dogs to eat them.” “Well,” replied Benga, “you Bayanzi can’t talk; you eat men.” This remark caused an outburst of indignation on the part of the little cannibal. “It is all very well to eat your enemies when you have killed them in battle—is not that quite a natural thing to do?—but no decent person would think of eating his friend. You Bapende think nothing of eating dogs, the greatest friend of man.” Buya, I am afraid, was so disgusted at the idea of eating dogs, that he flavoured his remarks about the Bapende tribe with a good many expressions such as a European lad of his age might well be expected not to know the use of. We engaged four of the southern Bambala from the neighbourhood of Kikwit to accompany us as body-servants to carry our guns when out shooting, and our cameras, water-bottles, &c. when on the march. Torday had the greatest difficulty in preventing large numbers of these people from joining our expedition, for, as I have said, whole villages of them desired to go with us to the Kasai, so that when we left Kikwit we had to start some few days earlier than the date upon which we had told the local natives we should commence our journey. The four men whom we took with us were extremely useful followers during the months they were in our employ, and as I shall have occasion frequently to refer to them, I must give their names. Mayuyu, a fine tall young man of about twenty-two years old, habitually carried Torday’s gun. This man was perhaps the most intelligent of our servants, and, as my narrative will show, his popularity with the people in whose country we passed through contributed largely to the success of our journey. Mokenye, my own gun-bearer, though not so tall as Mayuyu, was a splendid specimen of a man. Very powerfully built and possessed of great endurance, he never seemed to feel fatigue, and his obliging and cheerful disposition made him one of our most valuable servants. The other two were named Molele and Moame. From among the northern Bambala of Luana we selected eighteen men, all of whom Torday had previously known. These eighteen we hoped would be just sufficient to carry the absolute necessities of life and some of the objects we were going to collect for the Museum in case we should be obliged to retreat hurriedly from the unknown country of the Bakongo and Bashilele. We appointed one of these men, by name Kimbangala, to act as headman or capita. The factory of Kikwit made an excellent starting-point for a journey eastwards towards the Kasai. A steamer comes up the Kwilu every ten days from Dima, and deposits at Kikwit the stores and merchandise required for several other factories within a radius of about five or six days’ journey. Between the Kwilu and the Loange rivers are situated three factories belonging to the Kasai Company: Athenes (or Alela, as it is called by the natives) lies in the country of the Babunda tribe, near to the upper waters of the Kancha River; Dumba and Bienge are factories situated upon the Lubue. Caravans are frequently sent from Kikwit to each of these three factories. Our plan was to proceed to Alela, where Torday could carry on the study of the Babunda people, commenced years ago by his compatriot, the Hungarian Ladislaus Magyar, and from thence we intended to proceed to Dumba, where we should find the stores sent on from Dima, and where we hoped to obtain some information concerning the Bakongo people which would enable us to definitely fix upon some plan for crossing the Loange and entering their territory. Both at Alela and at Dumba we could keep in touch with the outside world by sending messengers to Kikwit. Before leaving the Kwilu we gave an exhibition to a large number of Bambala of one of the clockwork elephants which we had recently received from London. Torday had ordered these toys partly in the hope that some chief would covet them so much as to exchange curios for them which otherwise we should not be able to obtain, and partly because he thought it quite likely that the natives, who, of course, had never seen an automatic toy before, might attribute magical powers to the elephants, which they would most probably regard as the charm or fetish which watched over and protected us. The reception which the elephant met with at Kikwit certainly showed us that we had done well to have it sent out. The people were simply amazed at it. As the little toy, only some eight inches in height, having secretly been wound up in the seclusion of the tent, walked along the smooth top of a provision-box waving its trunk, the natives shrank away from it, holding their hands over their mouths and gasping with astonishment. Immediately after seeing it several people desired to purchase it, but there was not one man in the crowd who could be induced to touch it. Evidently the Bambala believed that it was the most potent fetish they had ever seen. We did not display the elephant to every one who came to see us in the hope of getting a glimpse of it, for we were afraid that the awe which it inspired might be lessened if we allowed it to become too common a spectacle. We therefore showed it only upon one or two occasions, and made a great favour of letting it walk at all. We were now confident that we had a powerful ally in the elephant, which might very likely prove more useful in the event of trouble with the natives than the ten military rifles which had not been unpacked during the earlier part of our journey, and which we now left at Kikwit to be forwarded to us at Dumba should we send for them.

[Illustration: A BABUNDA HUT.]

[Illustration: BABUNDA PORTERS ENTERING ATHENES.]

When we crossed the Kwilu and started off towards Alela our way lay for some miles in a southerly direction almost parallel to the river, and accordingly we marched for a considerable distance through the forest which borders the stream, but which is really only about ten miles in width opposite to Kikwit, and gives place to a very hilly grass country, plentifully studded with trees. We passed through several villages occupied by Bambala, in one or two of which we exhibited the “elephant,” always producing the greatest astonishment among the natives; but the territory of the Babunda begins at no great distance from the Kwilu, and after two very easy stages we arrived in their country. There we found villages very different from any that we had yet visited. Instead of building their huts in a group, the Babunda live in the midst of their plantations, and accordingly the villages cover a great many acres of ground, some even extending to a couple of miles in length. They are usually situated in a valley, and seen from a distance nestling at the foot of grassy slopes, which are here quite devoid of trees, they almost remind one of a village of the Sussex Downs. The huts themselves, dotted about with their fowl-houses and granaries in the millet fields, are square, and they have their doors so high above the ground that a little platform is built outside the entrance, by means of which the occupants can climb into the hut, and upon which the people sit and smoke their pipes in the evenings. The Babunda have enormous plantations, so that food is easily and cheaply obtainable in the country. We were welcomed cordially in every village, crowds of people meeting us on the road and accompanying us to our camping ground, singing in low and quite musical voices, for, like the neighbouring Bambala, the Babunda sing very well indeed. On our way we passed through two villages, between which a state of war existed, and we spent a night in one of them. One might have expected that one would find excitement raging in these villages, and to find some evidence of recent fighting. As a matter of fact, we noticed very little out of the common taking place in either village; all the men carried bows, but that is usual with the Babunda, so that it need not indicate that any hostilities were contemplated. When we arrived at the second of the two villages the chief welcomed us and conducted us to a shed beneath which we could rest, and then asked us to excuse him from entertaining us, as he was extremely busy making arrangements for a war! The last thing that he appeared to be preparing for was a breach of the peace. He seemed to be going round collecting quantities of the salt, neatly wrapped up in banana leaves, which is used so largely as currency in this district, and handing them over to a woman. We discovered, upon questioning the natives, that a man of this place had been killed in quarrel by a native from the neighbouring village through which we had passed. As is usual in such cases, no immediate attempt at reprisals had been made, but the chief of the murdered man’s village had demanded the payment of a heavy indemnity for the slaying of his subject, threatening, in case the damage should not be forthcoming, to declare war. The sum demanded had not been paid, and accordingly the chief in whose village we were staying was obliged himself to pay damages to the relatives of the murdered man, and had told his warriors to hold themselves in readiness to commence hostilities with the offending village. At the time of our arrival the dead man had not been buried, and a number of women were singing a funeral dirge around the hut in which the body was laid. During the evening and the night which followed we observed no posting of sentries or any other similar indication that a state of war existed, and we subsequently learned that the affair had been settled by the ultimate payment of the indemnity by the village of the murderer. Little inter-village disputes such as these are of frequent occurrence, but they rarely lead to serious fighting, and any casual traveller passing through the belligerent villages might usually fail to notice that anything extraordinary was going on. White men or their servants are, as a rule, allowed to travel through districts where a state of war exists without any molestation whatever, for the natives are quite content to keep their differences to themselves, and strictly respect the neutrality of the white man. Some days after we had passed through this district, a new European agent of the Kasai Company followed in our footsteps to commence his work at Alela. This young man had not been long enough in Africa to learn anything of a native language, and when his boy attempted to explain to him that there was trouble between the two villages which I have mentioned, he failed to understand what he was told. The boy thereupon resorted to signs, and, taking a bow, he tried to explain to the white man that fighting was likely to take place; the young man, however, imagined from his gesticulations that some attack might be contemplated upon himself and his caravan. He therefore passed an anxious and, I believe, a sleepless night, and fully believed when we met him some days later that he had had a very fortunate escape from a dangerous situation.

We arrived at Alela, which lies about seventy miles to the south-south-east of Kikwit, upon the fifth day after crossing the Kwilu. The country around the village is entirely devoid of trees, except for a number of palms in the Babunda villages, and consists of a plateau between the hilly country which we passed through after crossing the Kwilu, and the even more hilly district to the eastwards through which the river Lubue flows. In this part of the world there is practically no game whatsoever; the elephants which are to be found near the Kwilu do not forsake the woodlands which surround that river; buffaloes do not exist between the Loange and the Kwilu, and antelopes, even the almost ubiquitous duiker, are very rarely seen. The country therefore around Alela is by no means a sportsman’s paradise. The Kasai Company’s factory, Athenes, is situated only two or three hundred yards from the Babunda village of Alela, and, the European agent having allowed us the use of an empty building in which we could develop photographs, &c., we pitched our camp in the factory, going over daily to the native village to carry on our work among the people. The Babunda are a fine stalwart race of men; they are the blackest of any of the negroes with whom we have come in contact, and they do not cover their persons with any kind of dye. The most remarkable thing about their appearance is the quantity of hair which the men possess (the women cut their hair short), and the great variety of ways in which they dress it. Sometimes it hangs in a great plaited mass down the back of their necks, at others it is arranged in tufts running backwards from the forehead suggestive of the comb of a cock, but always it is dressed and oiled with the greatest care; many of the young Babunda dandies make caps of palm cloth to fit their head-dress in order that their hair may not become ruffled by the wind. Although we were very well received by the Babunda, we found them extremely reticent upon all matters connected with their tribal customs or beliefs, and they were by no means so anxious to sell us objects for the Museum as we could wish. Many of them offered to sell us rubber, and one man remarked that if we would not buy rubber we were no friends of the people. The rubber trade is carried on in this district in rather a peculiar manner. In most other places the native, when he requires any of the commodities that the white man sells, collects some rubber and takes it to a factory; but among the Babunda, however, and their neighbours the Bapindji, rubber is used as a currency, and a weekly market is held out in the open plains to the west of Alela, where the natives exchange rubber for other goods or food-stuffs among themselves. The rubber therefore is not, as a rule, brought to the white man by the native who has collected it, and the greatest care is taken by the people that the European should not be allowed to attend one of these markets and so ascertain the price at which it there changes hands. It would be extremely dangerous for a white man to attempt to intrude at one of these gatherings, for the Babunda are a warlike race, and they would be very likely to attack the trader if they thought he was spying upon them in order to find out how cheaply they sold the rubber among themselves. During a journey of a week’s duration which we made to the west of Alela, we passed by one of these markets. The crowds of people were scattered about in little groups over an extensive area of the plain, but when we attempted to approach them we were peremptorily told that we were not wanted. We were anxious, of course, to avoid any dispute with the Babunda, with whom we were endeavouring to become friendly, and we accordingly passed on without appearing to take any notice of the market. We subsequently learned that fighting between the members of the various villages is by no means rare at these gatherings.

During our week’s journey to the west we visited a number of Babunda villages, one of which, a very large one, had been the scene some few years before of some trouble between the natives and a European. Owing to some misunderstanding, which arose, I believe, from the fact that the white man was accompanied by a large number of followers, the people of this village, Mokulu, were under the impression that the traveller intended to attack them, and accordingly they had commenced hostilities by attacking him. The white man, although he had a number of rifles with him, had to give way before the warlike Babunda; and although, I believe, there were few, if any, casualties on either side, the Babunda were certainly under the impression that they gained a glorious victory. The chief, Mokulu, therefore possesses a very high idea of his own importance and military strength. We visited this man in the hope that he would use his influence, which was undoubtedly great, to induce the natives to sell us a number of objects for the British Museum. When we arrived in the village he welcomed us cordially, but very quickly broached the subject of an exchange of presents, mentioning the fact that he was a very important personage, and that he hoped we would remember this in selecting the present we should give him in exchange for the goat and chickens which he offered us. We gave him a pretty substantial present, and then began to discuss the purchase of curios. Mokulu assured us that there were many of the objects we required, such as carved wooden cups, embroidered cloth, weapons, &c., in the village, and that if we would give him a further present he would certainly be able to secure us a great many of them. We therefore promised him a present, and he departed into the village ostensibly with the purpose of requesting his subjects to deal with us. Shortly afterwards he returned, but no one brought us any curios for sale, and upon our inquiring if he had been unable to find any, he simply laughed and said, “O yes; the objects are coming now,” and left us. After this had happened three or four times he asked us to give him a present in advance, and having received it he again returned to the village, but came back empty-handed. Whenever we mentioned the subject of curios to him, he simply laughed and looked at us with a twinkle in his eye, and not one object could we buy in his village. The fact is he had not the slightest intention of helping us in any way, and he had certainly swindled us of the goods we had given him. As a rule, of course, it is far wiser never to give a present to a chief until one is quite certain what one will get in exchange for it, but in this case we knew that if we did not treat Mokulu handsomely we should stand no chance whatever of obtaining anything from him. We therefore speculated, and lost; and I think that Mokulu was far more pleased at the knowledge that he had cheated us than he was with the goods we had given him.

[Illustration: THE KWILU VALLEY AT BONDO.]

[Illustration: A VIEW FROM THE FACTORY OF ATHENES.]

After leaving Mokulu’s village we came once more to the banks of the Kwilu where dwell the Bapindji tribe, and stayed at a village called Bondo. The scenery here is remarkably fine; the Kwilu, which is at this point not more than one hundred yards wide, rushes swiftly through a cleft or ravine in the plateau about nine hundred feet in depth and a mile and a half to two miles at the summit. The surrounding country consists of grass land thickly studded with stunted trees, and only upon the very banks of the river is there any woodland. Here, however, there is a mass of luxuriant vegetation, and the stream rushes violently over a rocky bed beneath the shade of numbers of palm-trees. Just at Bondo the rocks practically put the course of the river into a series of rapids or falls, the roar of which can be heard at some miles’ distance in the calm of the tropical evening. We strolled down from the village to photograph some of these falls in the company of one or two native lads. When we reached the water’s edge these boys stepped into the river with, as we thought, the object of washing their feet. Suddenly one of them sprang into the stream with a cry, was caught by the rush of water, and swept downwards towards some rocks at a terrific pace. The whole thing happened in a moment, and we thought that the boy was drowned before either of us had time to do anything; but when he neared the rocks the current turned him towards the slack water near the banks, and with a few powerful strokes he swam out of the stream into the still waters, and thence calmly walked ashore. Seeing our look of astonishment at his safe return, the lad merely laughed and remarked that if one knew the currents one could always allow oneself to be swept downwards in the rapids with a certainty of regaining the still waters a little lower down, and he told us that the practice of this swimming feat was one of the pastimes of the boys of Bondo. To show us that he was not exaggerating he went through the performance two or three times, and I have never seen any feat which it appeared must so certainly end in destruction, and yet which, the native informed us, is in reality remarkably easy. Whether or not it is easy the Bapindji must be distinctly fine swimmers to attempt it. The chief of Bondo, which, by the way, is an extremely beautiful village with its picturesque grass huts and their little granaries suspended upon poles to keep the food-stuffs safe from the attacks of mice, was an old and very decrepit man with a remarkably suspicious nature. He was much impressed with the exhibition that we gave him of our fetish, the walking elephant, and in the evening he came privately to us and offered to buy it. He told us that owing to his infirmities he was unable to go about his village as much as he should wish, and he had no doubt that many things were said about him behind his back which he would like to overhear, and which would not be said if he were able to go about more among his subjects. If he possessed the elephant he could send it out in the evenings to walk around the village, where it could spy upon his people, and upon its return could report to him any plots against his authority which might be hatched. As we possessed two of these elephants, Torday thought it just possible there might at Bondo be some strange fetish or other object which we had not yet seen, and which we should like to secure for the British Museum. He therefore told the chief that he might possibly be induced to part with the elephant if anything that he specially desired was offered in exchange for it. The chief thereupon commenced to offer us all manner of objects, none of which were of sufficient interest to induce us to part with the toy, and finally he said he would give us quite a large quantity of ivory or one or two slaves in exchange for it. No doubt we should have been commercially the gainers had we accepted the offer of the tusks, but we had not come to Africa to trade in ivory, and we did not wish to compete with the Kasai Company in this matter; so we decided not to sell the elephant at Bondo, and it turned out lucky for us that we retained both the toys until we reached the unknown country. The Bapindji, who in appearance closely resemble the clay-covered Bambala, are, as a rule, a very peaceful people, but not long before our visit they had played a joke upon a trader who had, it appears, shown some nervousness in visiting them. They had crowded round him in the village, and had commenced to touch and examine his baggage, thinking that he was afraid of them because he did not object to their doing so. They quickly passed on from touching his clothing, and finally when the five armed men who accompanied him had thrown down their rifles and fled, the natives proceeded to remove his hat and pull his hair! After this they stole all his belongings and ordered him out of the village. Two or three days later they returned to him everything that they had stolen in perfect safety, for they had only purloined the goods to frighten him, and had doubtless thoroughly enjoyed what they regarded as an excellent joke. The natives of this part of Africa are rather partial to practical jokes, sometimes of rather a grim character. I have heard a story of a certain powerful chief, Yongo, threatening two white men, whose followers had deserted them, with instant death if they did not retire into a hut in his village and remain there as his prisoners. All day long this hut was closely guarded by armed warriors, but in the night when the travellers cautiously peered from the doorway they discovered that all the guards had been removed, leaving them free to escape, but that over the doorway was suspended a human ham, left there, doubtless, to give them one more unpleasant surprise before they made the escape which no one hindered them from attempting.

Upon our return to Alela after our trip in the Bapindji country, we had to wait for several days for the arrival of stores which we had left at Kikwit, and during this time we did all the work we could among the local Babunda, but owing to their extraordinary reticence, the results of Torday’s researches among them are meagre compared with those obtained among the Bushongo. Although almost every evening singing in the village told us that some ceremony was in progress, we could see very little of what was going on, and the only event of any particular interest which we witnessed was a funeral. The body, wrapped from head to foot in palm cloth, was laid out in a hut, around which the mourners were wailing and playing small rattles, the men covered with a red dye and the women with ashes. After some hours of weeping, in which a great number of persons took part, the corpse was carried out of the village and buried in the plains, where nothing but an old cooking-pot was left to mark the last resting-place of the dead. While waiting at Alela we were able to form some estimate of the skill which our followers possessed in the use of bows and arrows. We invited a few Babunda who happened to be passing to take part in a shooting contest, and the rivalry between the various tribes of which our caravan contained representatives and the local marksmen became extremely keen. We found that all our people, including little Buya, were remarkably good shots, and the rapidity with which they could loose off their arrows was extraordinary. We noticed that some of the Babunda shot in a kneeling position, and that our four southern Bambala possessed a curious method of defence, in which they used their bows as shields. Torday had previously noticed this custom, and, taking a blunt arrow, we put it to the test. My gun-bearer, Mokenye, gave us a demonstration of it. We threw the arrow at him, and, as it approached, with a sharp turn of the wrist he struck it aside with his bow, and so skilful was he in warding off the missile that only once did we succeed in getting an arrow through his guard. Of course this method of defence would be by no means certain against an arrow which, having been shot at a short range, was travelling at a great pace; but the Bambala assured us that they could really be sure of defending themselves from arrows which were moving less swiftly at the end of a long flight. The result of our shooting competition was that we learned we could depend upon our followers to at least hold their own with their national weapons should we have the misfortune to be attacked by the Bakongo or Bashilele. Alela, like the whole of the Kwilu region, is a comparatively healthy spot. In this district there are few mosquitos (upon the shores of the Kwilu there are practically none), and the tsetse fly appears to be so rare that we often wondered whether the great plains around Alela could not be turned into a pasturage for domestic cattle if the beasts could be brought into the country without bringing the fly with them. In the whole of the country we visited during our two years’ journey domestic cattle are not to be found, with the exception of a few head imported by the white man at Lusambo and Dima. Further to the south, however, near the Portuguese frontier, the natives breed a certain number of these animals, and also sheep. At the present moment the only domestic creatures which the natives keep in those parts of the Kasai which we visited are chickens and goats, although a few sheep, which have been imported from the south, are here and there to be found. Although, owing to the lack of shade, the sun at Alela can be very trying, there is often a cooling breeze sweeping over the plateau which serves to temper the fierce heat, and at the time we left Alela—that is to say, at the end of April 1909—rainstorms and tornadoes were of frequent occurrence, the rainy season having continued, so we were informed, rather later than usual.