Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume I Part 2

And now the scene improved. The hat-palm, a brab or wild date, the spine-palm (Ph?nix spinosa), and the Ok.u.meh or cotton-tree disputed the ground with the foul Rhizophora. Then clearings appeared. At Ejene, the second of two landing-places evidently leading to farms, we transferred ourselves to canoes, our boat being arrested by a fallen tree. Advancing a few yards, all disembarked upon trampled mud, and, ascending the bank, left the creek which supplies baths and drinking water to our destination.

Striking a fair pathway, we pa.s.sed westward over a low wave of ground, sandy and mouldy, and traversed a fern field surrounded by a forest of secular trees; some parasite-grown from twig to root, others blanched and scathed by the fires of heaven; these roped and corded with runners and llianas, those naked and clothed in motley patches. At 6.30 A.M., after an hour's work, probably representing a mile, and a total of 7 h. 30 m., or six miles in a south-south-west direction from Le Plateau, we left the ugly cul de sac of a creek, and entered Mbata, which the French call "La Plantation."

Women and children fled in terror at our approach--and no wonder: eyes like hunted boars, haggard faces, yellow as the sails at the Cape Verdes, and beards two days long, act very unlike cosmetics.

A house was cleared for us by Hotaloya, alias "Andrew," of the Baraka Mission, the lord of the village, who, poor fellow! has only two wives; he is much ashamed of himself, but his excuse is, "I be boy now," meaning about twenty-two. After breakfast we prepared for a sleep, but the popular excitement forbade it; the villagers had heard that a white greenhorn was coming to bag and to buy gorillas, and they resolved to make hay whilst the sun shone.

Prince Paul at once gathered together a goodly crowd of fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters, cousins and connections. A large and loud-voiced dame, "Gozeli," swore that she was his "proper Ngwe," being one of his numerous step mas, and she would not move without a head, or three leaves, of tobacco. Hotaloya was his brother; Mesdames Azizeh and Asunye declared themselves his sisters, and so all. My little stock of goods began visibly to shrink, when I informed the greedy applicants that nothing beyond a leaf of tobacco and a demi verre of tafia would be given until I had seen my way to work.

Presently appeared the chief huntsman appointed by Roi Denis to take charge of me, he was named Fortuna, a Spanish name corrupted to Forteune. A dash was then prepared for his majesty and for Prince Paul. I regret to say that this young n.o.bleman ended his leave-taking by introducing a pretty woman, with very neat hands and ankles and a most mutine physiognomy, as his sister, informing me that she was also my wife pro temp. She did not seem likely to coiffer Sainte Catherine, and here she is.

The last thing the prince did was to carry off, without a word of leave, the mission boat and the three Kru-boys, whom he kept two days. I was uneasy about these fellows, who, hating and fearing the Gaboon "bush," are ever ready to bolt.

Forteune and Hotaloya personally knew Mpolo (Paul du Chaillu), and often spoke to me of his prowess as a cha.s.seur and his knowledge of their tongue. But reputation as a linguist is easily made in these regions by speaking a few common sentences. The gorilla-hunter evidently had only a colloquial acquaintance with the half-dozen various idioms of the Mpongwe and Mpangwe (Fan) Bakele, Shekyani, and Cape Lopez people. Yet, despite verbal inaccuracies, his facility of talking gave him immense advantages over other whites, chiefly in this, that the natives would deem it useless to try the usual tricks upon travellers.

Forteune is black, short, and "trapu;" curls of the jettiest lanugo invest all his outward man; bunches of muscle stand out from his frame like the statues of Crotonian Milo; his legs are bandy; his hands and feet are large and patulous, and he wants only a hunch to make an admirable Quasimodo. He has the frank and open countenance of a sportsman--I had been particularly warned by the Plateau folk about his skill in cheating and lying.

Formerly a cook at the Gaboon, he is a man of note in his tribe, as the hunter always is; he holds the position of a country gentleman, who can afford to write himself M.F.H.; he is looked upon as a man of valour; he is admired by the people, and he is adored by his wives--one of them at once took up her station upon the marital knee. Perhaps the Nimrod of Mbata is just a little henpecked--the Mpongwe mostly are--and I soon found out that soigner les femmes is the royal road to getting on with the men.

He supplies the village with "beef," here meaning not the roast of Old England, but any meat, from a field-rat to a hippopotamus.

He boasts that he has slain with his own hand upwards of a hundred gorillas and anthropoid apes, and, since the demand arose in Europe, he has supplied Mr. R.B.N. Walker and others with an average of one per month, including a live youngster; probably most, if not all, of them were killed by his "bushmen," of whom he can command about a dozen.

Forteune began by receiving his "dash," six fathoms of "satin cloth," tobacco, and pipes. After inspecting my battery, he particularly approved of a smooth-bored double-barrel (Beattie of Regent Street) carrying six to the pound. Like all these people, he uses an old and rickety trade-musket, and, when lead is wanting, he loads it with a bit of tile: as many gorillas are killed with tools which would hardly bring down a wild cat, it is evident that their vital power cannot be great. He owned to preferring a charge of twenty buckshot to a single ball, and he received with joy a little fine gunpowder, which he compared complimentarily with the blasting article, half charcoal withal, to which he was accustomed.

Presently a decently dressed, white-bearded man of light complexion announced himself, with a flourish and a loud call for a chair, as Prince Koyala, alias "Young Prince," father to Forteune and Hotaloya and brother to Roi Denis,--here all tribesmen are of course brethren. This being equivalent to "asking for more," it drove me to the limits of my patience. It was evidently now necessary to a.s.sume wrath, and to raise my voice to a roar.

"My hands dey be empty! I see nuffin, I hear nuffin! What for I make more dash?"

Allow me, parenthetically, to observe that the African, like the Scotch Highlander, will interpose the personal or demonstrative p.r.o.noun between noun and verb: "sun he go down," means "the sun sets" and, as genders do not exist, you must be careful to say, "This woman he cry too much."

The justice of my remark was owned by all; had it been the height of tyranny, the supple knaves would have agreed with me quite as politely. They only replied that "Young Prince," being a man of years and dignity, would be dishonoured by dismissal empty- handed, and they represented him as my future host when we moved nearer the bush.

"Now lookee here. This he be bad plabba (palaver). This he be bob! I come up for white man, you come up for black man. All white man he no be fool, 'cos he no got black face!"

Ensued a chorus of complimentary palaver touching the infinite superiority of the Aryan over the Semite, but the point was in no wise yielded. At last Young Prince subsided into a request for a gla.s.s of rum, which being given "cut the palaver" (i.e. ended the business). I soon resolved to show my hosts, by threatening to leave them, the difference between traders and travellers. Barbot relates that the Mpongwe of olden time demanded his "da.s.sy"

before he consented to "liquor up," and boldly asked, "If he was expected to drink gratis?" The impertinence was humoured, otherwise not an ivory would have found its way to the factory.

But the traveller is not bound to endure these whimsy-whamsies; and the sooner he declares his independence the better. Many monkeys' skins were brought to me for sale, but I refused to buy, lest the people might think it my object to make money; moreover, all were spoilt for specimens by the "points" being snipped off.

I happened during the first afternoon to show my hosts a picture of the bald-headed chimpanzee, Nchigo Mbuwwe (Troglodytes calvus), here more generally called Nchigo Mpolo, "large chimpanzee," or Nchigo Njue, "white-haired chimpanzee." They recognized it at once; but when I turned over to the cottage ("Adventures," &c., p. 423), with its neat parachute-like roof, all burst out laughing.

"You want to look him Nago (house)?" asked Hotaloya.

"Yes, for sure," I replied.

Forteune set out at once, carrying my gun, Selim followed me, and the rear was brought up by a couple of little p.r.i.c.k-eared curs with a dash of the pointer, probably from St. Helena: the people will pay as much as ten dollars for a good dog. They are never used in hunting apes, as they start the game; on this occasion they nearly ran down a small antelope.

The path led through a new clearing; a field of fern and some patches of gra.s.s breaking the forest, which, almost clear of thicket and undergrowth, was a charming place for deer. The soil, thin sand overlying humus, suggested rich crops of ground-nuts; its surface was everywhere cut by nullahs, now dry, and by brooks, running crystal streams; these, when deep, are crossed by tree-trunks, the Brazilian "pingela." After twenty minutes or so we left the "picada" (foot-path) and struck into a thin bush, till we had walked about a mile.

"Look him house, Nchigo house!" said Hotaloya, standing under a tall tree.

I saw to my surprise two heaps of dry sticks, which a schoolboy might have taken for birds' nests; the rude beds, boughs, torn off from the tree, not gathered, were built in forks, one ten and the other twenty feet above ground, and both were canopied by the tufted tops. Every hunter consulted upon the subject ridiculed the branchy roof tied with vines, and declared that the Nchigo's industry is confined to a place for sitting, not for shelter; that he fas.h.i.+ons no other dwelling; that a couple generally occupies the same or some neighbouring tree, each sitting upon its own nest; that the Nchigo is not a "hermit" nor a rare, nor even a very timid animal; that it dwells, as I saw, near villages, and that its cry, "Aoo! Aoo! Aoo!" is often heard by them in the mornings and evenings. During my subsequent wanderings in Gorilla land, I often observed tall and mushroom- shaped trees standing singly, and wearing the semblance of the umbrella roof. What most puzzles me is, that M. du Chaillu ("Second Expedition," chap, iii.) "had two of the bowers cut down and sent to the British Museum." He adds, "They are formed at a height of twenty to thirty feet in the trees, by the animals bending over and intertwining a number of the weaker boughs, so as to form bowers, under which they can sit, protected from the rains by the ma.s.ses of foliage thus entangled together, some of the boughs being so bent that they form convenient seats." Surely M. du Chaillu must have been deceived by some vagary of nature.

The gorilla-hunter's sketch had always reminded me of the Rev.

Mr. Moffat's account of the Hylobian Bakones, the aborigines of the Matabele country. Mr. Thompson, a missionary to Sherbro ("The Palm Land," chap. xiii), has, however, these words:--"It is said of the chimpanzees, that they build a kind of rude house of sticks in their wild state, and fill it with leaves; and I doubt it not, for when domesticated they always want some good bed, and make it up regularly."

Thus I come to the conclusion that the Nchigo Mpolo is a vulgar nest-building ape. The bushmen and the villagers all a.s.sured me that neither the common chimpanzee, nor the gorilla proper (Troglodytes gorilla), "make 'im house." On the other hand, Mr.

W. Winwood Reade, writing to "The Athenaeum" from Loanda (Sept. 7, 1862), a.s.serts,--"When the female is pregnant he (the gorilla) builds a nest (as do also the Kulu-Kamba and the chimpanzee), where she is delivered, and which is then abandoned." And he thus confirms what was told to Dr. Thomas Savage (1847): "In the wild state their (i.e. the gorillas') habits are in general like those of the Troglodytes niger, building their nests loosely in trees."

Chapter III.

Geography of the Gaboon.

Before going further afield I may be allowed a few observations, topographical and ethnological, about this highly interesting section of the West African coast.

The Gaboon country, to retain the now familiar term, although no one knows much about its derivation, is placed, by old travellers in "South Guinea," the tract lying along the Ethiopic, or South Atlantic Ocean, limited by the Camarones Mountain-block in north lat.i.tude 4, and by Cabo Negro in south lat.i.tude 15 40' 7", a sea-line of nearly 1,200 miles. The Gaboon proper is included between the Camarones Mountains to the north, and the "Mayumba,"properly the "Yumba" country southwards, in south lat.i.tude 3 22',--a sh.o.r.e upwards of 400 miles long. The inland depth is undetermined; geographically we should limit it to the Western Ghats, which rarely recede more than 60 miles from the sea, and ethnologically no line can yet be drawn. The country is almost bisected by the equator, and by the Rio de Gabo, which discharges in north lat.i.tude 0 21' 25" and east longitude 9 21'

23"; and it corresponds in parallel with the Somali-Galla country and the Juba River on the east coast.

The general aspect of the region is prepossessing. It is a rolling surface sinking towards the Atlantic, in parts broken by hills and dwarf chains, either detached or pushed out by the Ghats; a land of short and abnormally broad rivers, which cannot, like the Congo, break through the ridges flanking the Central African basin, and which therefore are mere surface drains of the main ranges. The soil is mostly sandy, but a thin coat of rich vegetable humus, quickened by heavy rains and fiery suns, produces a luxuriant vegetation; whilst the proportion of area actually cultivated is nothing compared with the expanse of bush.

In the tall forests, which abound in wild fruits, there are beautiful tracts of clear gra.s.sy land, and the woods, clear of undergrowth, resemble an English grove more than a tropical jungle. Horses, which die of the tsetse (Glossina morsitans) in the interior of North Guinea, and of damp heat at Fernando Po, thrive on its downs and savannahs. The Elais palm is rare, sufficing only for home use. The southern parts, about Cape Lopez and beyond it, resemble the Oil River country in the Biafran Bight: the land is a ma.s.s of mangrove swamps, and the climate is unfit for white men.

The Eastern Ghats were early known to the "Iberians," as shown by the Sierra del Crystal, del Sal, del Sal Nitro and other names, probably so called from the abundance of quartz in blocks and veins that seam the granite, as we shall see in the Congo country, and possibly because they contain rock crystal. Although in many places they may be descried subtending the sh.o.r.e in lumpy lines like detached vertebrae, and are supposed to represent the Aranga Mons of Ptolemy, they are not noticed by Barbot. Between the Camarones River and Cape St. John (Coris...o...b..y), blue, rounded, and discontinuous ma.s.ses, apparently wooded, rise before the mariner, and form, as will be seen, the western sub-ranges of the great basin-rim. To the north they probably anastomose with the Camarones, the Rumbi, the Kwa, the Fumbina north-east, and the Niger-Kong mountains.[FN#5]

They are not wanting who declare them to be rich in precious metals. Some thirty years ago an American super-cargo ascended the Rembwe River, the south-eastern line of the Gaboon fork, and is said to have collected "dirt" which, tested at New York, produced 16 dollars per bushel. All the old residents in the Gaboon know the story of the gold dust. The prospector was the late Captain Richard E. Lawlin, of New York, who was employed by Messrs. Bishop of Philadelphia, the same house that commissioned the cha.s.seur de gorilles to collect "rubber" for them, and who was so eminently useful to the young French traveller that the scant notice of his name is considered curious.

Great would be my wonder if the West African as well as the East African Ghats did not prove auriferous; both fulfil all the required conditions, and both await actual discovery. The Mountains of the Moon, so frequently mentioned by M. du Chaillu and the Gaboon Mission, are doubtless the versants between the valleys of the Niger and the Congo. Lately Dr. Schweinfurth found an equatorial range which, stretching northwards towards the Bahr el Ghazal, was seen to trend westward. According to Mr. Consul Hutchinson ("Ten Years' Wanderings among the Ethiopians," p.

250), the Rev. Messrs. Mackey and Clemens, of the Corisco Mission "explored more than a hundred miles of country across the Sierra del Crystal Range of Mountains" --I am inclined to believe that a hundred miles from the coast was their furthest point. We shall presently travel towards this mysterious range, and there is no difficulty in pa.s.sing it, except the utter want of a commercial road, and the wildness of tribes that have never sighted a traveller nor a civilized man.

The rivers of our region are of three kinds; little surface drains princ.i.p.ally in the north; broad estuaries like the Mersey and many streams of Eastern Scotland in the central parts, and a single bed, the Ogobe, breaking through the subtending Ghats, and forming a huge lagoon-delta. Beginning at Camarones are the Boroa and Borba Waters, with the Rio de Campo, fifteen leagues further south; of these little is known, except that they fall into the Bight of Panari or Pannaria.

According to Barbot (iv. 9), the English charts give the name of Point Pan to a large deep bight in which lies the harbour-bay "Porto de Garapo" (Garapa, sugar-cane juice?); and he calls the two rounded hillocks, extending inland from Point Pan to the northern banks of the Rio de Campo, "Navia." The un-African word Panari or Pannaria is probably a corruption of Pao de Nao, the bay north of Garapo, and "Navia."

These small features are followed by the Rio de So Bento, improperly called in our charts the St. Benito, Bonito, Bonita, and Boneto; the native name is Lobei, and it traverses the Kombi country, --such is the extent of our information. The next is the well-known Muni, the Ntambounay of M. du Chaillu, generally called the Danger River, in old charts "Rio de So Joo," and "Rio da Angra" (of the bight); an estuary which, like most of its kind, bifurcates above, and, receiving a number of little tributaries from the Sierra, forms a broad bed and empties itself through a ma.s.s of mangroves into the innermost north-eastern corner of Coris...o...b..y. This sag in the coast is formed by Ninje (Nenge the island?), or the Cabo de So Joo (Cape St. John) to the north, fronted south by a large square-headed block of land, whose point is called Cabo das Esteiras--of matting (Barbot's Estyras), an article of trade in the olden time. The southern part receives the Munda (Moondah) river, a foul and unimportant stream, which has been occupied by the American missionaries.

We shall ascend the Gaboon estuary to its sources. South of it, a number of sweet little water-courses break the sh.o.r.e-line as far as the Nazareth River, which debouches north of Urungu, or Cape Lopez (Cabo de Lopo Gonsalvez), and which forms by anastomosing with a southern river the Ogobe (Ogowai of M. du Chaillu), a complicated delta whose sea-front extends from north to south, at least eighty miles. Beyond Cape Lopez is an outfall, known to Europeans as the Rio Mexias: it is apparently a mesh in the net- work of the Nazareth-Ogobe. The same may be said of the Rio Ferno Vaz, about 110 miles south of the Gaboon, and of yet another stream which, running lagoon-like some forty miles along the sh.o.r.e, has received in our maps the somewhat vague name of R.

Rembo or River River. Orembo (Simpongwe) being the generic term for a stream or river, is applied emphatically to the Nkomo branch of the Gaboon, and to the Ferno Vaz.

The Ogobe is the only river between the Niger and the Congo which escapes, through favouring depressions, from the highlands flanking the great watery plateau of Inner Africa. By its plainly marked double seasons of flood at the equinoxes, and by the time of its low water, we prove that it drains the belt of calms, and the region immediately upon the equator. The explorations of Lieutenant Serval and others, in "Le Pionnier" river-steamer, give it an average breadth of 8,200 feet, though broken by sand- banks and islands; the depth in the main channel, which at times is narrow and difficult to find, averages between sixteen and forty-eight feet; and, in the dry season of 1862, the vessel ran up sixty English miles.

Before M. du Chaillu's expeditions, "the rivers known to Europeans," he tells us in his Preface ("First Journey," p. iv.), "as the Nazareth, Mexias, and Fernam Vaz, were supposed to be three distinct streams." In 1817 Bowdich identified the "Ogoowai"

with the Congo, and the Rev. Mr. Wilson (p. 284) shows us the small amount of knowledge that existed even amongst experts, five years before the "Gorilla book" appeared. "From Cape Lopez, where the Nazareth debouches, there is a narrow lagoon running along the sea-coast, and very near to it, all the way to Mayumba. This lagoon is much traversed by boats and canoes, and, when the slave-trade was in vigorous operation, it afforded the Portuguese traders great facilities for eluding the vigilance of British cruizers, by s.h.i.+fting their slaves from point to point, and embarking them, according to a preconcerted plan."

M. du Chaillu first proved that the Ogobe was formed by two forks, the northern, or Rembo Okanda, and the southern, or Rembo Nguye. The former is the more important. Mr. R.S.N. Walker found this stream above the confluence to be from 1,800 to 2,100 feet wide, though half the bed was occupied by bare sand-banks. Higher up, where rocks and rapids interfered with the boat-voyage, the current was considerable, but the breadth diminished to 600 feet.

The southern branch (also written Ngunie) was found in Apono Land (S. lat. 2), about the breadth of the Thames at London Bridge, 700 feet. In June the depth was ten to fifteen feet, to which the rainy season added ten.

M. du Chaillu also established the facts that the Nazareth river was the northern arm of the Delta, and that the Ferno Vaz anastomosed with the Delta's southern arm.

The only pelagic islands off the Gaboon coast are the Brancas, Great and Little; Corisco Island, which we shall presently visit; Great and Little Elobi, called by old travellers Mosquito Islands, probably for "Moucheron," a Dutchman who lost his s.h.i.+p there in 1600. The land about the mouths of the Ogobe is a ma.s.s of mangrove swamps, like the Nigerian Delta, which high tides convert into insular ground; these, however, must be considered terra firma in its infancy. The riverine islands of the Gaboon proper will be noticed as we ascend the bed.