After the usual interminable delays inseparable from dealings with African potentates, we were at last ready for the trek to our hunting grounds. Report had it that these lay fifteen days’ march to the south. The king had been most generous. He lavished upon us food, carriers, guides, horses and even milk-cows to accompany us. He sent with us his most renowned elephant hunters, from whom I tried to get information regarding the country we were going to. The tales of countless numbers of immense elephant told us by Buba Gida himself we frankly disbelieved, as he had shown us forest tusks from his ivory store as having come from the Lakka country, which we knew lay well to the east of the great forest belt. There is no mistaking the difference between forest ivory and that from grass or scrub bush country, and, from all accounts, the Lakka country was of the latter description.
For some twelve days or so we followed narrow winding native trails through good but almost totally deserted country. Only on two occasions did we camp by human habitations, and these were merely outposts of Buba Gida’s. The contrast between this well watered and healthy but uninhabited country and the miles of plantations and teeming thousands of the immediate vicinity of Buba Rei was most striking. Enquiry elicited the fact that all the former inhabitants of these rolling plains had been “gathered in” by Buba Gida, and that he was surrounded similarly on all sides by broad uninhabited belts. Game was wild and scarce. Giraffe, haartebeeste and oribi we saw in the flesh, while pig and buffalo tracks were infrequently met. Lion we heard once only. Buba’s hunters told us that at one time elephant were numerous all over this country. One of them showed us where he had killed his last one. I asked him what reward he had got from the king. He told me that the tusks were only so high, indicating a length of about 3 ft., which would correspond to a weight of perhaps 20 lbs. or 25 lbs. Continuing he said what other king would have given him so much as Baba (i.e., Father), for, in spite of the smallness of the tusks, Baba had given him another woman, making his fourth, and had filled his hut with corn sufficient to keep him drunk on beer for two months. Few indeed are the Sovereigns who could have rewarded their gamekeeper in such a fashion. This man was firmly loyal to his king, and it may be of interest to enquire into this loyalty to a cruel and despotic tyrant, for it was shared by all of his subjects, as far as we could see.
Now, in this kingdom everyone and everything belongs to the king. He farms out his female slaves to all and sundry as rewards for meritorious services rendered the king. All children born as a result of these operations belong to the king, just as the parents do. It must be remembered that this is “domestic” slavery and not at all the horrible affair commercial slavery once was. There is no export of slaves, as the coming of the white man has prevented it. Domestic slavery entails upon the master certain duties towards the slave. Should the slave work well and faithfully for the master, the latter is bound to find for him a wife. The slave may, should he choose, become a freeman after sufficiently long and good service. At any time, should he possess sufficient intelligence to embrace the Mohammedan religion, he automatically becomes a freeman, for it is forbidden to enslave one of the Faith, and Buba Gida himself was a Mohammedan. To my mind the only explanation of the undoubted devotion shown by slaves to their masters is—women.
A FOOT SOLDIER.
To the African a wife is everything. It is equivalent in Western life to having a living pension bestowed on you. For your wife builds your house, provides wood and water, grows your food, makes the cooking utensils, mats, beds, etc., not only for your use, but also for sale. You sell them and pocket the proceeds. Not only this, for she brews beer from the corn which she grows, and you drink it. She drinks it and likes it, too, but naturally, you see that she does not overdo it. Then, again, she bears you children, who also work for you, and you sell the females. It really amounts to selling, although it is very bad manners to speak of the transaction as such. Marriage they call it, and dowry they call the price paid. Here again you are the lucky recipient of this dowry, and not the girl. True, you have to provide your daughter with certain things, such as a few mats, cloths, cooking pots, etc., most of which your wife makes. From all this it will be seen what very desirable creatures women are in Africa. There, as elsewhere, will be found bad wives, but where we have to grin and bear them, or divorce them, or be divorced by them, the African can send his back to her father and demand her sister in her place. This procedure is only resorted to in the case of a wife failing to bear children; any other fault, such as flirting, nagging, quarrelling, impudence, neglect or laziness, being cured at home by means best known to themselves. It is not so surprising, after all, that a man will work for the better part of his life to serve a master who will, in the course of time, bestow upon him that priceless possession—a wife.
So far our attempts to gain the confidence of our escort had always been met with great reserve on their part. In the evenings round the camp fire is where the African usually unburdens himself, but our lot had evidently been warned not to open their mouths to the white men. These orders they very faithfully obeyed until we approached the boundaries of what might be called Buba Gida’s sphere of influence. Gradually they became less secretive, and we began to hear of strange doings. In a moment of excitement, brought on by the death of a fine buck, one of the old elephant hunters disclosed to me that the king’s people were in the habit of raiding slaves from the Lakka country. As we would enter this country in another day or two’s march for the peaceful purpose of hunting elephants, and as I hoped for the usual and invaluable help from the natives, this news was rather disconcerting, accompanied as we were by fifty or sixty slavers. In reply to the question, What will the natives do when they see us? came the cheering reply, Run like hell!
Where elephant frequent settled country, and especially where they are in the habit of visiting plantations, it is essential for the hunter to be on the most friendly terms with the natives. He must at all costs avoid frightening them. The natural suspicion with which all strangers are regarded must somehow be allayed. Generally speaking, the hunter’s reputation precedes him from country to country, and, if that reputation be a good one, he is welcomed and helped. Only when tribes are at serious war with each other is there a break in this system of intelligence.
On entering the Lakkas’ country, therefore, we were severely handicapped, firstly, by not having previously visited either it or its neighbours, and, secondly by having as our safari a villainous band of slave-raiders, already well known as such to the Lakkas. I anticipated trouble, not so much from the natives as from our own band of thieves. I could see that it would be necessary to take the first opportunity of impressing upon the king’s people in as forcible a manner as possible that we white men were running the show and not they.
To my astonishment, on arriving at the first Lakka village we and our raiders were received in quite a friendly way. On enquiring into this, I found that this section of the Lakkas admitted allegiance to Buba Gida and were at war with the section further on, where we hoped to meet with elephant. Hence our welcome.
A chance to assert ourselves occurred on the first day of our arrival among the Lakkas, for no sooner had the camp been fixed up than our merry band had a Lakka youth caught and bound and heavily guarded. On enquiring into this affair it transpired that this youth had been taken in a previous raid, but had escaped and returned to his country. We had the lad straight away before us, asked him if he wished to go back to Buba Gida, and, on his saying that this was the last thing he desired, at once liberated him. He did not wait to see what else might happen; he bolted. Of course, the king’s people were furious with us. We, on our part, were thoroughly disgusted with Buba Gida for having designed to carry on his dirty work under the cloak of respectability afforded by the presence of two Englishmen on a shooting trip. We had all of them before us, and explained that the very first time we found any one of them attempting anything in the slaving line we would tie him up and march him straight to the nearest military post. We let them see that we were thoroughly determined to take complete command of the expedition from now on, and had little further trouble from them. Later on, it is true, we were annoyed to find that small native boys attached themselves as camp followers to our safari. They rather embarrassed us by saying that they wished to go with us, but they quickly disappeared when their probable future was explained to them. I reckon that we must have spoiled Buba Gida’s scheme to the extent of at least a round dozen of valuable slaves.
After all our trekking and the fussing with semi-civilised Africans, it was a great relief to find ourselves one day at the entrance to a village of the real genuine wild man. We had been passing through No Man’s Land—as we may call the neutral zone between tribes at war—for the last few hours. As the grass was high at this season we had not been spotted, and our arrival at the village was a complete surprise. Amid terrific excitement women and children rushed for the bush, fowls raced about, dogs barked, while the young men appeared from the huts with their shields and spears, and faces dangerously scared. This is the moment of all others when anything but a perfectly tranquil outward appearance generally precipitates a tragedy. Either a native bloods his spear or arrow in the body of one of the visitors or some strung-up visitor fires his gun, when the situation gets out of hand at once. At these tense moments the appearance of a perfectly cool white man, for preference unarmed, acts in a most extraordinary manner. But duck or dodge, or get close to cover, or put up your rifle, and the thing is spoiled. There is no finer instance of this than when Boyd-Alexander went to visit the Sudan chief who had sworn to do him in. Without rifle or escort Boyd-Alexander voluntarily strolled up to this man’s stronghold, knowing, as he must have done, having been warned by the Sudan authorities, that his only chance was to appear perfectly unafraid, or to avoid the country altogether. He visited the chief and, in due course, left the village, closely followed by him. In full view of the inhabitants of his village it was certainly “up to” the chief to show his hand, and I am convinced that he was on the very point of murdering Boyd-Alexander when he turned a perfectly unmoved face upon the chief and fixed him with a steady look. The chief slunk back to his village, while Boyd-Alexander pursued his way. From those who can read between the lines his description in “From the Niger to the Nile” of this little incident is an epic.
On the occasion of our first introduction to the Lakkas luckily nothing serious happened. After a few seconds of very nervous demonstrating with spears and shields, our friends-to-be rushed off in a panic, one fat youth getting a spear crossed between his legs and falling flat. As we required a guide, and as our only chance of getting one was to seize him, we secured him before he had quite recovered. He at once showed his sense by yielding quietly, although he must have been in an awful funk. This lad eventually became our voluntary guide and introducer, but for the moment we were compelled to hold him prisoner. Keeping a sharp eye on our ruffians to see that they took nothing from the huts, we passed through and finally reached the village of a man who was supposed to be the best able to show us elephant. The village, of course, was deserted, so we pitched camp bang in the centre of it. We also got our captive to shout to his friends that all was well, that we were friends and had come to hunt elephant only. This latter statement required some believing, judging by the time it took to get any answer to our overtures—which was not surprising, accompanied as we were by notorious slavers. But at last an old woman came, nosed about a bit, and left again, returning presently with the man we wanted. I have often admired the infinite capacity of the African to take things as they come with composure, but never more so than on this occasion. Here was his village in the hands of his enemies, added to this the complication and anxiety caused by the presence in their midst of two white men. So far, his dealings with white men had been anything but pleasant—a German military expedition had passed through. Yet here he was, ready for anything that might turn up, unarmed and with a face of brass—for a day or so willing to please, but, above all, willing to speed the parting guest. Elephants? Rather! Hundreds of them, all round So-and-So’s village fifteen miles further on. None here? Oh, no! They were here, but all have gone to ⸺. And what about those tracks we saw as we neared his village? Oh! those were made by some elephant which came from ⸺, but which returned to ⸺ the next morning.
It was obvious that this eagerness to get rid of us would last just as long as we remained unwelcome; that is, until we had killed an elephant and shared the meat with the natives. After that event relations might reasonably be expected to become more cordial, provided that meanwhile we could avoid fighting in any shape or form. Now, this avoiding of fighting must necessarily depend largely on the natives themselves, for of course if one is attacked one must defend oneself. Especially so among these Lakkas was this the case, for they had no powerful chiefs whom they obeyed. Indeed, they were what my companion and myself called, loosely enough, I dare say, Bolsheviks. Every man was out for himself, and to hell with everything else. No authority of any kind was obeyed. And to this total lack of cohesion or combination we undoubtedly owed the fact that we were not attacked seriously before we became friendly with them. They had developed the art of running away to a fine point by storing their grain and beer-making appliances in the thick part of the bush, by building huts, the loss of which by fire at the hands of an enemy would occasion least labour to repair, by keeping all livestock, such as goats and sheep, tethered at a convenient distance from the village, and in many other ways assisting their one trump card—instant flight.
Few people who have not experienced it can have any conception of how effective such a “barrage” can be. You perhaps wish to traverse the country. You arrive at a village. Nobody there. You proceed along a path which seems to lead in the direction in which you wish to go. It lands you in another deserted village. Now you have to camp, and water has to be found. Sometimes in the dry season this may be miles from the camp. The drawers of water must be escorted. Then you wish to purchase food for your carriers. No one to sell it. You think to take it and leave the value in kind in its place, only to discover that no food of any kind is kept in the village. All this time not a soul is seen or even heard. You give it up and pass on to some actively hostile or friendly tribe, as the case may be.
As we appeared to be so unwelcome in this village we decided to move on the next day. The chief man of the village promised to provide us with a guide to the village where elephant were reported as visiting the gardens every night. Anxious as he was to get rid of us, we reasoned that, to attain that object, he would surely provide the guide or lead us himself. We consequently liberated our captive guide, loading him with presents and promising him mountains of meat when and wherever we should kill an elephant if he would come to claim it. He stayed around for some time, and I began to hope that he would accompany us further, but he presently disappeared.
On the morrow our reasoning about the guide was completely confounded, as white men’s reasoning so often is when applied to African affairs. No guide was forthcoming, nor could the village headman be found. The village was once more completely deserted. As, however, we had been able to get the general direction from the headman before he went to bush, we broke camp and took a likely-looking path.
After much wandering from one deserted village to another we arrived in the afternoon at a large one on the edge of a slough. As usual there was not a soul to be seen, but I have no doubt that our every movement was being carefully watched. On the march some kob had been shot and a good portion of the meat reserved for any native who might venture to approach us. After we had had our meal an old man came in. He was taken no notice of by anybody—far the best way to allay suspicion. When he seemed more at his ease I gave him some buck meat. He took it and at once began to cook it, as he had seen it cut from a leg with the skin still on it. It was unlikely, therefore, to be poisoned, and besides, if he took the meat away with him he would have to share it with others. To avoid this he evidently purposed eating it in our camp.
When he had fairly got the taste of meat on his palate, I got the interpreter to work on him about elephant. At first he said there were none. We did not worry him, although we knew this to be a lie, as we had seen recent tracks that day. After some time he volunteered the information that elephant had been in the gardens the night before. I said to him that I thought I would go and kill one or two, in as indifferent a tone as I could, and that if he cared to come along he would certainly get some meat. He became quite excited then, saying he would fetch me a man who would show me where the elephant had been eating the corn in the night. Off he hurried and soon came back with several men. We were ready for them, and as they preceded us some of them ran on ahead to pick up the freshest tracks, blowing as they went their curious little signalling whistles. With these whistles they can talk over quite a distance—in fact, it is a sort of short-range wireless telegraph. We found it subsequently of great assistance, as the notes of these whistles were familiar to elephant, and they appeared not to mind them in the least.
Although the sun was already half-way between the vertical and the sundown, we judged from the air of suppressed excitement about our guides that the game was not far off. This surmise proved to be correct, for about a mile from our camp we entered a large plantation literally ploughed up by elephant. My companion, who was naturally the most stoical of men, showed signs of great interest. This was his first safari in real wild country, and he had never yet seen a wild elephant. All the tracks were those of bulls, and some of them were colossal. Plenty of 63-in. and 64-in. feet had been there, and one with a circumference of 70 ins. This meant that the owner had a shoulder height not far short of 12 ft. We thought that if their tusks were in proportion to their feet we had indeed struck lucky.
The elephant had evidently been visiting this plantation nightly for some time, and the damage must have appeared terrible in the eyes of the owners. Bananas had been stripped, broken off, or completely uprooted. Sugar cane ceased to exist. Much of the millet had been eaten and more trampled down. But it was the ground-nuts which had suffered most. These nuts grow in clusters on the roots of a clover-like plant and are barely covered with soil. The shell is quite fragile and cracks on the least pressure being applied. When it is remembered that the foot of an elephant covers some two square feet of ground, and that he has four of them, and that when feeding he is seldom still for long, one begins faintly to appreciate the devastating effect two or three dozen of them would have on any garden.
Wasting no more time than was necessary to unravel the tracks, we were soon hot on the trail of a large bull. This trail led us among other gardens for a time, all similarly raided. But presently we left cultivation and plunged into high bush, fairly dense in parts, with long grass in the more open places. I stopped and told the crowd of natives who had tagged themselves on to us that no one was to follow us on any account, hinting with my rifle what would happen if they did so. Then we took with us one native and followed the trail. In a very short time we heard noises ahead of us. We stopped to listen. Sure enough it was elephant. Leaving the native, we walked carefully but rapidly toward the noises. It had been arranged between us that, as I had had previous experience of this game, I was to do the shooting, while my companion picked up what tips he could. I was leading when I suddenly saw through the clearer ground-stems of the bush the feet and parts of the legs of a motionless elephant. At the same time the noises we had been approaching appeared to come from beyond this quiet elephant. A glance through the leaves revealed nothing of his body. This was awkward. He was only a few paces distant, and the wind was all over the place, as is usual in thick stuff. If we ran into him and killed him the chances were that the shot would stampede the others. And then, he might have little or no ivory, although his legs and feet were massive enough. Relying on these elephants being quite familiar with human smell, I slipped round behind him, making plenty of unavoidable noise, and so got between him and the noisy bunch. We were rewarded for this manœuvre by reaching an opening in the bush which gave us not only a view of the noisy ones, but also a glance at our first friend as he moved off. This glance showed that he had short but thick ivory. I instantly put a shot into him and another into what appeared to be the largest among the noisy ones. Both were heart shots, as in this type of bush the lower half of an elephant is generally more clearly disclosed than the upper half. At the shot there was the usual terrific commotion, crashing trees and dust. Hot on the vanishing sterns we raced and jumped to a standstill, face to face with the first elephant I had fired at. Head on, there he stood, perfectly motionless, about ten yards away. To me, of course, he was merely a stricken animal and would topple over in a few moments; but to my companion he must have appeared quite sufficiently grim and menacing. I dropped him with the frontal brain shot, and showed my companion the direction and elevation for this shot, and then off we raced again on the trail of the others. We soon came upon the second elephant; he was down, but not yet quite dead. As he raised his head my companion tried a shot at his brain with his ·450, but failed to find it. I finished him with a ·318.
Leaving W. to wait for the natives, I tried on alone. I had not gone a quarter of a mile when I caught sight of a large bull elephant. He was moving towards an abandoned plantation through nice open stuff, and had I been able to reach him before he arrived at the densely bushed plantation I would have got him easily. But he reached and disappeared into the thick stuff without offering a chance. One would imagine that so massive an animal would leave behind him a passage clear enough for a man to pass along with ease and speed. This is by no means the case; everything rises up and closes in behind him again, and the trail remains almost as difficult to follow as before. I plunged into the horrible stuff and was soon close up to his stern. All I could do was to keep close up and wait until either we reached an open patch, when I might be able to range up alongside, or until he turned so as to give a chance at the brain. The rifle cartridge is not yet invented which will rake a full-grown elephant from stern to vitals.
HE DISAPPEARED INTO THE THICK STUFF.
As I stumbled and clambered and pushed and sweated along behind this fellow he suddenly stopped, stood for an instant, then threw his head up, backed sharply towards me and to my left, at the same time bringing his front end round with a swing, and there he was now facing me. This manœuvre was so unexpected and done so swiftly—all in one movement, as it were—as to be perfectly amazing. The transformation from that massive but rather ridiculous-looking stern to the much higher head, with its broad forehead, gleaming tusks and squirming trunk, was so sudden and disconcerting that I missed the brain and had barely time to reload and fire again—this time into his body and from the hip, with the muzzle perhaps only a few inches from his hide—as he rushed over the very spot I had occupied an instant before. Whew! But I thought I had him, although I suspected I had placed my shot too low. This was wrong, for I just then heard a crash and knew he was down. He was stone dead when I reached him. It was almost sundown, and I called up the natives. W. came with them. I was very exhausted and thirsty, having done no elephant hunting since before the war, so we demanded beer from the Lakkas, who were now our bosom friends. This was soon forthcoming from the bush, and very refreshing we both found it. We had three very large elephants, which would supply everyone with meat, and we expected that it would bring the natives in from other parts with further news of elephant. The ivory was very disappointing; it was of good quality, but very short and hollow. After the death of the first elephant, runners had gone to bring up the safari to a nearer village, so that we had not the long and deadly trek so common after an elephant hunt. In fact, we had barely gone a mile when we saw the welcome reflection of our fires on the trees, and we were soon as comfortable as possible.
After a substantial meal of buck-meat and rice, I asked W. what his impressions had been like. He told me the most vivid occurred when I fired the first shot. He said it appeared for all the world as if the elephant were motionless and the trees rushing past them.
As anticipated, the Lakkas became much more friendly after enjoying such mountains of meat, to say nothing of the riddance of the marauders from their gardens. They never became of very much use to us in the capacity of carriers, and always bolted to the bush when the subject was mentioned. Even when we offered lavish payment in trade goods for the carrying of our ivory from one village to another they invariably bolted. They could never quite trust our following, I think.
We hunted elephant for some time in this country. There were numerous bull herds scattered about, living chiefly upon native plantations, and we ridded the Lakkas of a fair number, although the nature of the country was against big bags. When the time came for us to return to Buba Rei to get our canoes we parted firm friends with the Lakkas. The return journey was accomplished without incident more alarming than a poor abortive attempt by some Lakkas to spear some of our following. No one was hurt, and we were overjoyed to receive news while on the return journey that our canoes had arrived. The short rains had begun, and we had some trouble crossing some of the rivers. We could now begin the real expedition, which had as its object the ascent of the practically unknown and quite unexplored Bahr Aouck.
On our arrival at Buba Rei for the second time we again visited the king to thank him for all he had done for us. This time relations were rather frigid. To begin with, the king remained lolling on his couch when he received us. He had, of course, heard all about our refusing to allow any “recruiting” of slaves to be carried out, and I daresay he was furious with us. He remained polite but cold, and we noticed a great falling off in the presents of food, etc., which are demanded by custom. Among other things we were distinctly annoyed to find that we were classed by the king as third-class white men. To Buba Gida there were three classes of European. In the first category were French governors, French administrators, and French military officers. For these sweet champagne was forthcoming, in quantities to suit the individual importance of the visitor. Class two comprised minor French officials, important American or English travellers, scientific expeditions, surveys, etc.; these got whisky, while ginger beer was reserved for elephant hunters, clerks, or small commercial people. We were Ginger Beerites.
In spite of this we calculated what we owed the king, and paid him by presenting him with three tusks. He seemed only tolerably pleased with these. It was with a feeling of relief that we departed from Buba Rei and its atmosphere of intrigue and cruelty.
