CHAPTERVIWHY THE CANOE UPSETThemist of the river still hung in the air in the gray morning light. Early as it was, the men of the village were astir, making ready for their expedition. Mpoko and Nkula, rubbing their eyes, made a hasty breakfast and scampered down to the river bank with their fishing tackle.The boys had two new scoop nets, which Nkunda had helped to make. Like all the children of the village, they could do all sorts of things with fiber string, and could even make the string. Hibiscus fiber, braided palm leaves, thongs, and bark, all were used for string, thread, or cord as each happened to be wanted. Strands of fiber were made into string by rolling with the hand, on the thigh. Mpoko and Nkunda and Nkula, and even their younger playmates, could make any number of cat’s cradles. One looked like a locust, another like a grass hut with four sides and a pointed top; and another was called “The Bed.” The Alo Man had taught them one named for the great zigzag valley of the Zambezi—the Batoka Gorge, below the Victoria Falls, which are three times as high asNiagara. The Alo Man could also make the Moon figure, the Moon darkened, the Fighting Lions and the Parrot Cage; and the boys knew figures called the Fish Trap, the Pit, and the Calabash Net.Mpoko knew exactly how he should go about his fishing, although he had never fished in the part of the river where he and Nkula were going that morning. He was always the leader in their sports, and as they squatted on the end of a canoe waiting for the men to come, he explained his plan all over again. They would fish in two ways. First, they would look for a pool or backwater where the current was not as strong as it was in mid-channel. In the water, but near the bank, they would build little lattice-work fences, about eighteen inches apart. Then they would take the larger of their nets and find some rocks on which to stand while they dipped the net into the water with the mouth upstream. Fish swimming downstream would swim into the net and be caught. Then the boys would lift the net out and lay the fish on the rocks to dry. There were said to be plenty of little fish something like whitebait in that part of the river, and if they had good luck, there would be fresh fish for supper.When they were tired of this way of fishing, they would take the smaller nets and go back to the pool where they had built their fences, and here they might find some small fish that had come in between the fences and could not find their way out. The small nets would scoop up these little fish quite easily.Mpoko knew as well as any one that it is not very wise to count your fish while they are still in the river, but he could not help making a guess at the number they might get in a whole day’s fishing. The men heard him and grinned as they started to push off the canoes.The boats were heavy, but they rode well in the water. They were worked by means of paddles, and each was made of a single tree trunk hollowed out. The people of this thatch-roofed village had no knowledge of carpenter work. Whatever they made of wood was cut out of the solid block with their adzes. In this way they would chisel out a log until a good-sized hollow had been formed; then hot stones were placed in it to burn out a deeper hole. When the stones cooled, they were heated again to be put back after the charred wood was scraped away; this was done over and over, until the canoe was deep enough to be seaworthy.Sometimes the ends were carved to look like the head of some animal. The paddles also were sometimes decorated with chip-carving. The African dugout is not so graceful as the birch canoe, but it has some advantages of its own. The Congo is a peculiar river.One reason why so much of Africa is still wild country, some of it not even explored, is that there are so many falls in the rivers. Boats cannot go up from the sea to the interior unless they are light enough to be carried round the falls. And boats that are small enough for this are too small to be of much use in carrying goods for trading or large parties of settlers. Another reason is that so much of the country is either dense jungle or waterless plain. Almost the only way to carry goods into the Upper Congo country is by porters, who have to follow narrow trails, in single file.boy crossing bridgeWhere such a trail crosses a river too deep to ford,—and in flood time African rivers are likely to be deep,—of course there must be a bridge. The wild people are clever at making woven bridges. To be sure, these bridges are not wide enough for horses or wagons, but there are no horses or wagons to go over them, so that makes no difference. Travelers pay something for the privilege of using such a bridge, while the men of the country near by keep it in order. It was to repair a bridge that the men of Mpoko’s village were going downstream now.The canoes shot swiftly down with the current. The two boys, with their keen black eyes, saw all sorts of interesting things by the way. Once they disturbed a hippopotamus having one of his daily baths. His great mouth looked as if he could swallow them whole, but he was much more scared than they were. Once the strange, whiskered, black and white face of a colobus monkey peered out of a tree top. Then a crowned crane, his feathered crest very erect, rose out of the swamp and flapped away, his long legs trailing behind him. Even as early as this the sun was blazing hot as a furnace and the mist had burned quite away.There was no need to paddle; the men hadall they could do to steer the canoes as they rode on the strong current. At last they shot round a bend of the river and into the shadow of the bridge and scrambled ashore.The bridge was made of saplings firmly lashed together and had a handrail of rattan. It hung from the great trees on the two sides of the river, high above even the reach of a flood. A log bridge might have been swept away by the caving of the banks in flood time, and the people could not possibly have built a stone bridge or an iron one.When the traders were coming back from their last journey, they had noticed that the supports of the bridge were rather shaky, and as they meant to send a much larger caravan over it before long, they wanted to make sure that all was in order.heron in flightOver narrow streams, bridges are sometimes made of a bundle of slim tree trunks lashed together and resting on the banks, but here the river was too wide for that. Farther down, the banks of the Lower Congo are steep hills, a mile and a quarter apart, and through this funnel-like channel the Upper Congo and its tributary streams pour their waters into a tremendous whirlpool known as the Devil’s Cook Pot. None of the men of the village had ever seen this awful place, but they had heard of it, and many were the tales told of the dangers of the unknown waters toward which their river flowed through the wilderness.While the men worked at the lashings of the timbers and the closer knotting of the ropes, the boys went about their fishing. They did not have much trouble in finding a suitable shallow place for their little wicker fences, but when they came to fish with the scoop net, Mpoko discovered that he had not reckoned on the strength of the stream. His best net was whirled away out of his hand before he had used it twice. Thereafter the boys had to take turns, one using the remaining large net while the other fished in the shallows.Their misfortunes did not end there. Theyhad just gathered all their little fishes into a woven basket, when Nkula darted back from the river with a startled shout, and Mpoko turned just in time to see net, fish, and all vanish into the long, wicked jaws of a crocodile.The boys were in luck, as one of the men told them, not to have gone into the crocodile’s stomach themselves. All the same, they felt very cheap to be going home with only a few mean little fish for the whole day’s work.The bridge had now been put in order, and as the party took boat again for home, several crocodile stories were told. Every one of the men had had some experience with the Terror of the Waters. They all knew how he would lie for hours in the mud with only his nose in sight, looking exactly like a fallen log, and how his hoarse call could sometimes be heard in the swamp through the whole night. The boys felt secretly glad to be on the way home in a solid, well-balanced log canoe.It was slower work returning than it had been coming down the river, and the paddles worked steadily. When they had traveled some distance, a hunter from another village hailed them from the trail. He had a wild pig that he did not wish to carry home and after a little bargainingthe bridge menders paid for it and it was tumbled into the canoe. As one of the men said slyly, roast pork for supper would do very well, seeing that the boys had not caught enough fish to make a showing!At home, in the village, the women had come in and were at work as usual preparing supper. A little before sunset, far down the river, the voices of men singing came over the water, and as the song grew louder they could make out something about roast pig for supper.“They must have killed something,” said Nkunda.“The boys have had bad luck with their fishing,” said the Alo Man, whose keen ears had caught the little jeering note in the song.In another minute the canoes would come in sight round the bend in the river, when—all at once—there was a great splash and a chorus of yells, and the song broke off in the middle of a line. When the canoes presently appeared, the men were no longer singing; they were paddling with all their might, and they looked rather scared and crestfallen.Men in riverMpoko and Nkula, however, did not look crestfallen. They grinned as only small African boys can grin, as they hopped out of the canoeand scampered for the huts with their few but precious fish.“Where is that roast pork we were going to have for supper?” asked the Alo Man, coming to meet the party.“We were nearly home when a crocodile rose up almost under the canoe, snapped at the pig, tipped us over, and went off with the meat,” growled one of the men.Thus, after all, there would not have been nearly so good a supper that night if the boys had not gone fishing.Crocodile stories were naturally in order after supper, and the Alo Man, when his turn came, told the story of the Rabbit and the Crocodile.I always like to tell of the time, long and long ago, when the creatures lived in towns like people, and had their own farms.rabbit an crocodileThe Crocodile had a farm by the river, andhe used to come up on land when he liked. One day, as he lay sunning himself on his farm, the Rabbit saw him.“How do you do, Uncle?” said the Rabbit, edging up toward him. “You seem to be taking life easy. All you have to do is to sleep, and eat, and bathe, and enjoy yourself.”“Let me alone,” grunted the Crocodile, who was sleepy. And he shut his eyes.Close to the Crocodile’s nose there grew a nice juicy bunch of young plantains.“How good those leaves do look!” thought the Rabbit. “And there they grow and flourish under the very nose of a creature who never eats them. I wonder if I could not get just one good bite, and then run?”The Rabbit crept up closer and closer, but just as he was going to nibble at the leaves, the Crocodile woke up and yelled at him.“Get away from here, you little thief!” he roared, and he snapped so savagely with his sharp, white, pointed teeth that the Rabbit ran faster than he had ever thought he possibly could run, and never stopped until he reached home.He told his wife and children about the selfish old Crocodile, who was so full of dinner that he could not keep awake and who would not let ahungry little Rabbit nibble the leaves that he did not want himself. When the little Rabbits heard why they had no supper that night, they had a great deal to say about the Crocodile.“That is all very well,” said the Rabbit, “but when a chicken is the judge, the cockroach gets no justice. We cannot depend on any one else to punish the Crocodile; we must do it ourselves. Come all of you and get dry grass and leaves, and we will go and lay them in a circle around the Crocodile while he is asleep, and then we will set them on fire. We’ll give him a fine scare.”Then all the Rabbits wriggled with joy and kicked up their heels at the thought of what was going to happen, and they gathered many armfuls of grass and leaves and laid them in a circle round the Crocodile. The fire was kindled, and it began to blaze up and smoke. The Rabbits hid themselves in the bushes and kept as still as stones.Crackle—crackle—snap-snap-snap! went the fire, but the Crocodile did not wake up.Snap! snap! snap! went the burning twigs, but the Crocodile did not wake up.The smoke began to get thicker and blacker, until at last they could not see the Crocodile,but they heard him cough in his sleep. Then he turned over, and coughed again.“Haugh! Haugh! What’s the matter here? I can’t breathe!” grunted the Crocodile.Then he choked, and coughed, and opened his mouth so wide that a live coal flew into it. At that he woke up completely. He made a rush to get away from the fire, but found it in front of him. He turned round, and saw it still in front of him, while at the same time it was behind him scorching the end of his tail. Then he made one big jump and got out of the circle of fire, and his hide was so thick that he was hardly burned at all, but he was badly scared and very angry. When he heard all the squealing and laughter of the Rabbits in the bushes, he was so angry he could hardly speak.“Don’t you ever dare to come near the river again!” he shouted, and off he waddled as fast as he could go, to get into the cool water and put mud on his burned places.river shoreline“Don’t you ever dare to come up here on the land again!” squealed the Rabbits, and theyset about gathering the plantains and other vegetables on the Crocodile’s farm where the fire had not come.And from that day to this the Rabbits never go near the river if they can help it, and the Crocodile never goes far from the river if he can help it. He does not like to be reminded of the time when he was caught in the fire by a trick and the Rabbits laughed at him, for the news went from one tongue to another, and the Crocodile has never heard the last of it.sunset
Themist of the river still hung in the air in the gray morning light. Early as it was, the men of the village were astir, making ready for their expedition. Mpoko and Nkula, rubbing their eyes, made a hasty breakfast and scampered down to the river bank with their fishing tackle.
The boys had two new scoop nets, which Nkunda had helped to make. Like all the children of the village, they could do all sorts of things with fiber string, and could even make the string. Hibiscus fiber, braided palm leaves, thongs, and bark, all were used for string, thread, or cord as each happened to be wanted. Strands of fiber were made into string by rolling with the hand, on the thigh. Mpoko and Nkunda and Nkula, and even their younger playmates, could make any number of cat’s cradles. One looked like a locust, another like a grass hut with four sides and a pointed top; and another was called “The Bed.” The Alo Man had taught them one named for the great zigzag valley of the Zambezi—the Batoka Gorge, below the Victoria Falls, which are three times as high asNiagara. The Alo Man could also make the Moon figure, the Moon darkened, the Fighting Lions and the Parrot Cage; and the boys knew figures called the Fish Trap, the Pit, and the Calabash Net.
Mpoko knew exactly how he should go about his fishing, although he had never fished in the part of the river where he and Nkula were going that morning. He was always the leader in their sports, and as they squatted on the end of a canoe waiting for the men to come, he explained his plan all over again. They would fish in two ways. First, they would look for a pool or backwater where the current was not as strong as it was in mid-channel. In the water, but near the bank, they would build little lattice-work fences, about eighteen inches apart. Then they would take the larger of their nets and find some rocks on which to stand while they dipped the net into the water with the mouth upstream. Fish swimming downstream would swim into the net and be caught. Then the boys would lift the net out and lay the fish on the rocks to dry. There were said to be plenty of little fish something like whitebait in that part of the river, and if they had good luck, there would be fresh fish for supper.
When they were tired of this way of fishing, they would take the smaller nets and go back to the pool where they had built their fences, and here they might find some small fish that had come in between the fences and could not find their way out. The small nets would scoop up these little fish quite easily.
Mpoko knew as well as any one that it is not very wise to count your fish while they are still in the river, but he could not help making a guess at the number they might get in a whole day’s fishing. The men heard him and grinned as they started to push off the canoes.
The boats were heavy, but they rode well in the water. They were worked by means of paddles, and each was made of a single tree trunk hollowed out. The people of this thatch-roofed village had no knowledge of carpenter work. Whatever they made of wood was cut out of the solid block with their adzes. In this way they would chisel out a log until a good-sized hollow had been formed; then hot stones were placed in it to burn out a deeper hole. When the stones cooled, they were heated again to be put back after the charred wood was scraped away; this was done over and over, until the canoe was deep enough to be seaworthy.Sometimes the ends were carved to look like the head of some animal. The paddles also were sometimes decorated with chip-carving. The African dugout is not so graceful as the birch canoe, but it has some advantages of its own. The Congo is a peculiar river.
One reason why so much of Africa is still wild country, some of it not even explored, is that there are so many falls in the rivers. Boats cannot go up from the sea to the interior unless they are light enough to be carried round the falls. And boats that are small enough for this are too small to be of much use in carrying goods for trading or large parties of settlers. Another reason is that so much of the country is either dense jungle or waterless plain. Almost the only way to carry goods into the Upper Congo country is by porters, who have to follow narrow trails, in single file.
boy crossing bridge
Where such a trail crosses a river too deep to ford,—and in flood time African rivers are likely to be deep,—of course there must be a bridge. The wild people are clever at making woven bridges. To be sure, these bridges are not wide enough for horses or wagons, but there are no horses or wagons to go over them, so that makes no difference. Travelers pay something for the privilege of using such a bridge, while the men of the country near by keep it in order. It was to repair a bridge that the men of Mpoko’s village were going downstream now.
The canoes shot swiftly down with the current. The two boys, with their keen black eyes, saw all sorts of interesting things by the way. Once they disturbed a hippopotamus having one of his daily baths. His great mouth looked as if he could swallow them whole, but he was much more scared than they were. Once the strange, whiskered, black and white face of a colobus monkey peered out of a tree top. Then a crowned crane, his feathered crest very erect, rose out of the swamp and flapped away, his long legs trailing behind him. Even as early as this the sun was blazing hot as a furnace and the mist had burned quite away.
There was no need to paddle; the men hadall they could do to steer the canoes as they rode on the strong current. At last they shot round a bend of the river and into the shadow of the bridge and scrambled ashore.
The bridge was made of saplings firmly lashed together and had a handrail of rattan. It hung from the great trees on the two sides of the river, high above even the reach of a flood. A log bridge might have been swept away by the caving of the banks in flood time, and the people could not possibly have built a stone bridge or an iron one.
When the traders were coming back from their last journey, they had noticed that the supports of the bridge were rather shaky, and as they meant to send a much larger caravan over it before long, they wanted to make sure that all was in order.
heron in flight
Over narrow streams, bridges are sometimes made of a bundle of slim tree trunks lashed together and resting on the banks, but here the river was too wide for that. Farther down, the banks of the Lower Congo are steep hills, a mile and a quarter apart, and through this funnel-like channel the Upper Congo and its tributary streams pour their waters into a tremendous whirlpool known as the Devil’s Cook Pot. None of the men of the village had ever seen this awful place, but they had heard of it, and many were the tales told of the dangers of the unknown waters toward which their river flowed through the wilderness.
While the men worked at the lashings of the timbers and the closer knotting of the ropes, the boys went about their fishing. They did not have much trouble in finding a suitable shallow place for their little wicker fences, but when they came to fish with the scoop net, Mpoko discovered that he had not reckoned on the strength of the stream. His best net was whirled away out of his hand before he had used it twice. Thereafter the boys had to take turns, one using the remaining large net while the other fished in the shallows.
Their misfortunes did not end there. Theyhad just gathered all their little fishes into a woven basket, when Nkula darted back from the river with a startled shout, and Mpoko turned just in time to see net, fish, and all vanish into the long, wicked jaws of a crocodile.
The boys were in luck, as one of the men told them, not to have gone into the crocodile’s stomach themselves. All the same, they felt very cheap to be going home with only a few mean little fish for the whole day’s work.
The bridge had now been put in order, and as the party took boat again for home, several crocodile stories were told. Every one of the men had had some experience with the Terror of the Waters. They all knew how he would lie for hours in the mud with only his nose in sight, looking exactly like a fallen log, and how his hoarse call could sometimes be heard in the swamp through the whole night. The boys felt secretly glad to be on the way home in a solid, well-balanced log canoe.
It was slower work returning than it had been coming down the river, and the paddles worked steadily. When they had traveled some distance, a hunter from another village hailed them from the trail. He had a wild pig that he did not wish to carry home and after a little bargainingthe bridge menders paid for it and it was tumbled into the canoe. As one of the men said slyly, roast pork for supper would do very well, seeing that the boys had not caught enough fish to make a showing!
At home, in the village, the women had come in and were at work as usual preparing supper. A little before sunset, far down the river, the voices of men singing came over the water, and as the song grew louder they could make out something about roast pig for supper.
“They must have killed something,” said Nkunda.
“The boys have had bad luck with their fishing,” said the Alo Man, whose keen ears had caught the little jeering note in the song.
In another minute the canoes would come in sight round the bend in the river, when—all at once—there was a great splash and a chorus of yells, and the song broke off in the middle of a line. When the canoes presently appeared, the men were no longer singing; they were paddling with all their might, and they looked rather scared and crestfallen.
Men in river
Mpoko and Nkula, however, did not look crestfallen. They grinned as only small African boys can grin, as they hopped out of the canoeand scampered for the huts with their few but precious fish.
“Where is that roast pork we were going to have for supper?” asked the Alo Man, coming to meet the party.
“We were nearly home when a crocodile rose up almost under the canoe, snapped at the pig, tipped us over, and went off with the meat,” growled one of the men.
Thus, after all, there would not have been nearly so good a supper that night if the boys had not gone fishing.
Crocodile stories were naturally in order after supper, and the Alo Man, when his turn came, told the story of the Rabbit and the Crocodile.
I always like to tell of the time, long and long ago, when the creatures lived in towns like people, and had their own farms.
rabbit an crocodile
The Crocodile had a farm by the river, andhe used to come up on land when he liked. One day, as he lay sunning himself on his farm, the Rabbit saw him.
“How do you do, Uncle?” said the Rabbit, edging up toward him. “You seem to be taking life easy. All you have to do is to sleep, and eat, and bathe, and enjoy yourself.”
“Let me alone,” grunted the Crocodile, who was sleepy. And he shut his eyes.
Close to the Crocodile’s nose there grew a nice juicy bunch of young plantains.
“How good those leaves do look!” thought the Rabbit. “And there they grow and flourish under the very nose of a creature who never eats them. I wonder if I could not get just one good bite, and then run?”
The Rabbit crept up closer and closer, but just as he was going to nibble at the leaves, the Crocodile woke up and yelled at him.
“Get away from here, you little thief!” he roared, and he snapped so savagely with his sharp, white, pointed teeth that the Rabbit ran faster than he had ever thought he possibly could run, and never stopped until he reached home.
He told his wife and children about the selfish old Crocodile, who was so full of dinner that he could not keep awake and who would not let ahungry little Rabbit nibble the leaves that he did not want himself. When the little Rabbits heard why they had no supper that night, they had a great deal to say about the Crocodile.
“That is all very well,” said the Rabbit, “but when a chicken is the judge, the cockroach gets no justice. We cannot depend on any one else to punish the Crocodile; we must do it ourselves. Come all of you and get dry grass and leaves, and we will go and lay them in a circle around the Crocodile while he is asleep, and then we will set them on fire. We’ll give him a fine scare.”
Then all the Rabbits wriggled with joy and kicked up their heels at the thought of what was going to happen, and they gathered many armfuls of grass and leaves and laid them in a circle round the Crocodile. The fire was kindled, and it began to blaze up and smoke. The Rabbits hid themselves in the bushes and kept as still as stones.
Crackle—crackle—snap-snap-snap! went the fire, but the Crocodile did not wake up.
Snap! snap! snap! went the burning twigs, but the Crocodile did not wake up.
The smoke began to get thicker and blacker, until at last they could not see the Crocodile,but they heard him cough in his sleep. Then he turned over, and coughed again.
“Haugh! Haugh! What’s the matter here? I can’t breathe!” grunted the Crocodile.
Then he choked, and coughed, and opened his mouth so wide that a live coal flew into it. At that he woke up completely. He made a rush to get away from the fire, but found it in front of him. He turned round, and saw it still in front of him, while at the same time it was behind him scorching the end of his tail. Then he made one big jump and got out of the circle of fire, and his hide was so thick that he was hardly burned at all, but he was badly scared and very angry. When he heard all the squealing and laughter of the Rabbits in the bushes, he was so angry he could hardly speak.
“Don’t you ever dare to come near the river again!” he shouted, and off he waddled as fast as he could go, to get into the cool water and put mud on his burned places.
river shoreline
“Don’t you ever dare to come up here on the land again!” squealed the Rabbits, and theyset about gathering the plantains and other vegetables on the Crocodile’s farm where the fire had not come.
And from that day to this the Rabbits never go near the river if they can help it, and the Crocodile never goes far from the river if he can help it. He does not like to be reminded of the time when he was caught in the fire by a trick and the Rabbits laughed at him, for the news went from one tongue to another, and the Crocodile has never heard the last of it.
sunset