IIIBUSH TRAVEL
Upon our arrival at Batanga we at once commenced the preparations for a journey into the bush, than which nothing could have been a greater contrast to the long, idle voyage on the sea; for our physical strength and powers of endurance were to be taxed more than ever before.
There were two others besides myself, Mr. Kerr, a new arrival, and the Rev. A. C. Good, an intrepid and consecrated missionary whose name was already known throughout the United States. Dr. Good had been twelve years in Africa, working most of the time among the Fang of the Ogowé River, but had lately come to Batanga for the purpose of opening the Bulu interior. The language of the Fang was so much like the Bulu that Dr. Good could converse with the latter from the first. Before the arrival of Mr. Kerr and myself Dr. Good had already made one journey into the Bulu country to a distance of seventy-five miles, where he chose the site of the first station, afterwards named Efulen.
In those days nearly all the distance between Efulen and the beach was covered with dense unbroken forest. None of the Bulu as far as we knew had ever been to the coast; and no white man had ever entered that part of the interior. The Mabeya tribe, living immediately behind the coast tribe, were already in trade relations with the Bulu; so that there were roads, that is, foot-paths, through the forest. But they were seldom used, and were only a little better than none at all. The present good bush-roadfrom Batanga to Efulen did not exist in those days. We made it ourselves after we had been there nearly a year, and it has been greatly improved from time to time. The first road which we followed made a great detour to the south, and we walked, according to Dr. Good’s calculation, seventy-five miles from Batanga to Efulen, although the distance by the present straight road is less than sixty miles.
And, by the way, before we enter the forest, bidding a temporary farewell to civilization, we do well to take leave of this highly civilized term, “mile.” It is more than superfluous in such a forest: it is positively misleading. Such roads are not measured in terms of linear distance, but only in measures of time. To say that a place is distant half a day’s journey, or five hours, is to speak intelligibly; but to say that a place is five miles distant is to give not the slightest information as to the time it will take to reach it. On the few good roads which in recent years have been improved by the government one might perhaps walk thirty miles a day: on the worst roads that I have attempted I could not walk five miles a day with equal labour.
Men can now walk to Efulen in three days over the present road, and I with others have done it in that time, although in greatly reduced health; yet I was not nearly so tired as when I used to walk it in five days over the road that we first followed. The greater distance was by no means the only difference; the chief difference was in the quality of the road. The first road was so obscure that in many places we could scarcely follow it; and in some places it was so completely overgrown that we had to cut our way through, making the road as we went, for which reason we always kept men with cutlasses ahead of the caravan. Much also depends upon the season. A road might be very good and easy to travel in the dryseason, but almost, or quite, impassable in the wet season, when the forest is flooded, when the streams have become rivers and the rivers have far overspread their banks, so that the traveller is wading in water much of the time. In opening a new station we could not choose our time for travel, and it so happened that in my year and a half at Efulen I only made two round trips in the dry season.
The African forest is the greatest in the world, both in the area covered and in the density of growth. The tribes with whom I am familiar conceive of the whole world as a vast bush intersected with rivers. The tribes are moving ever from the interior towards the sea; and some of those who have long been coast tribes still retain in the idiom of their language the record of their former ignorance. The word for “river” is used to designate the sea, and “the whole world” is “the whole bush.” A man will speak of his country as his “bush,” and the white man’s country he calls “the white man’s bush.” God, they say, loves “the whole bush.” Heaven, or the other world, is “the other bush,” and in singing “I have a Father in the promised land,” they say: “I have a Father in the bush beyond.”
One who is accustomed to the maple, beech, oak and pine, finds the African forest strangely unfamiliar. There are extremes of soft and hard woods; and one will soon observe that as a rule the soft woods have large leaves, while most of the hard woods have small leaves. Teak, mahogany, lignum vitæ, ebony and camwood are characteristic. The most striking and beautiful tree of the forest is a species of cotton wood. It grows an enormous height, with a silver-gray trunk like a column of granite, and is supported by immense buttresses. In the primeval forest, that which has not at any time been cut down for man’s habitation, the foliage is very high and the gray trunks suggest the columns of a cathedral. Thebranches above interlace, forming a canopy of foliage and excluding the sun. Cable vines of various sizes, many of them six or eight inches in diameter, lash the trees together, ascending the tree trunks in a spiral coil like an endless python and sometimes strangling them to death, then swinging from tree to tree in loops and coils, gnarled and twisted. The foliage and flowers of these spread through the tree tops, making the dim light below more dim, and from the swinging cables an undisciplined profusion of other vines and various hanging plants depend in festoons and draperies, all interwoven in bewildering confusion. The ground is covered with a thick compost of rotting leaves and branches and insects. Every few yards a giant tree trunk lies prostrate and is filled with myriad insects that will soon devour it.
Lightning sometimes strikes the tallest trees, which come crashing down bringing half a dozen others with them. Then in this open place where the sunlight reaches the ground there shoots up with amazing rapidity a tangled undergrowth, from which young trees race upwards to secure the light and air in such rivalry and struggle that the weak are soon strangled or crowded to death, and the battle is to the swift.
The poet William Watson in melodious verses prays for—
“The advent of that morn divineWhen nations may as forests grow,Wherein the oak hates not the pine,Nor beeches wish the cedars woe,But all in their unlikeness blendConfederate to one golden end.”
“The advent of that morn divineWhen nations may as forests grow,Wherein the oak hates not the pine,Nor beeches wish the cedars woe,But all in their unlikeness blendConfederate to one golden end.”
“The advent of that morn divineWhen nations may as forests grow,Wherein the oak hates not the pine,Nor beeches wish the cedars woe,But all in their unlikeness blendConfederate to one golden end.”
“The advent of that morn divine
When nations may as forests grow,
Wherein the oak hates not the pine,
Nor beeches wish the cedars woe,
But all in their unlikeness blend
Confederate to one golden end.”
No one will deny that this is beautiful poetry; but it is deplorably false science. Nothing could be more untrue to the facts. The oak, the pine and the cedar, consideredas living things with conscious aims and individual interests (for that is how the poet would have us consider them), do hate each other with a hatred to which there is no parallel in human society. Men sacrifice for each other, and we even have martyrs. But in the forest there is no sacrifice, no martyrdom, nor do trees ever confederate; but each fights for itself in a ceaseless and savage struggle. And nowhere else in the forest world is the struggle for existence so remorseless as in the tropic zone of Africa; for nowhere else is variety so profuse and growth so rapid.
In the primeval forest the undergrowth is not dense and travel is not so difficult. But as the natives are always moving their towns and abandoning old sites, a considerable portion of the forest is the growth of a few years; and here the undergrowth is so dense and matted that there is no possibility of passing through it except as one tunnels his way with the cutlass, and the jungle closes on both sides of the path like a wall. This is the usual character of the bush along the rivers. There are not many flowers in the forest. The most common is the orchid. But flowers are numerous in the clearings and more open places. In particular there is a lovely convolvulus of delicate lavender that climbs over all the lower growth of the clearing and blooms in such profusion as to give its colour to the landscape. The impression of the beauty or the ugliness of the forest depends largely upon whether one sees it in the wet or the dry season. In the dry season, travelling on a fairly good road, the idea of the cathedral with its solemn majesty was often present with me; I was impressed with its beauty and enjoyed the solitude. But in the wet season I loathed it. Who could enjoy, or even recognize, beauty while standing knee-deep in mud? Its stillness is not the stillness that speaks to the mind and heart. It is dull and dead.
We had twenty-eight native carriers (whom we must callporterswhen speaking to Englishmen) each with a load of about forty pounds. They often carry more than twice that weight over the present road to Efulen; seventy pounds is the standard load. But besides the better roads there is also this great difference that the natives were at that time new to the work of carrying heavy loads, to which they have since become accustomed. The present young men have grown up in the work. Besides our personal effects and food supplies we carried trade-goods, with which to buy food and building material from the natives, and to pay native workmen. There was no currency in that interior tribe. We paid out principally salt, beads, and brass rods, the latter used for ornaments for the legs and arms. After a year there was some demand for cloth—highly coloured prints—and other articles for which there was no use at first.
We were dressed in suits of denim or other cheap material. I bought my suit at a trading-house in Batanga for two dollars, and packed away all my better clothing. Beneath the coat I wore a heavy woollen undershirt, the only proper kind for the tropics, and proper all the time, no matter what else one may choose or discard. We were glad to discard the helmet while travelling in the forest, and to substitute a felt hat. Tastes differ widely as to the best footwear; but I like best for such a road a pair of canvas shoes with rubber soles, alternating with stout leather shoes every second or third day. Each man carries a wooden stick or staff about five feet in length. When a man has chosen and trimmed for himself a stick that exactly suits him, he becomes attached to it with a sentimental regard, according to the distance he has travelled with it and the journeys he has made. He is sensitive to any criticism passed upon it; and no experienced bush-traveller will make disparaging remarksabout another man’s staff, but around the camp-fire they will vie with each other in praising each his own. I remember mine very well and I would give much to have it now.
Perhaps this attachment is the stronger because, as a rule, we do not carry watches in that country. Most watches will run only for a short time. A fine gold watch is the most useless of all; the very cheapest will run longest. When I began to tell this in America, I found that I was sacrificing my reputation for accuracy of statement: whereupon I stated the facts to a jeweller who, after consideration, said there was a very plain explanation, namely, that the hair-spring of the more expensive movements is usually finer and more closely coiled than that of the cheaper watches, so fine that the least rust upon it would interfere with its motion.
Our outfit for the road was very light. This was Dr. Good’s habit and with me it was a kind of instinct. We were measuring our strength against the forces of the forest, testing our ability to endure and to wrest from the forest itself the means of enduring. Having this feeling, to carry along the ready-made comforts of civilization seems like taking a mean advantage of nature. Some few things must be taken. But the opinions of the wisest differ as to what those few things should be, and each man ardently believes in, and advocates his own outfit. The explanation is that nothing of the outfit except food is an absolute necessity. Other things, however important, are of the nature of comforts; and what is necessary to one man’s comfort, another can often do without.
One may suggest for such a journey a good water-proof bag containing a sweater, extra socks and pajamas, and two blankets. A good rubber blanket is a necessity if one expects to sleep in the open forest. Canned foods, of course, are used, and for cooking utensils, a frying-panand a sauce-pan will suffice for three, and a cup, tin plate, knife, fork and spoon for each. Several cutlasses are necessary for clearing the road, preparing beds, cutting fire-wood and other uses. Matches also must be taken and kept in a dry place. A few towels and toilet articles complete the necessary outfit. On our first journey we took camp-beds, but only because we had need of them at Efulen. I never carried one again.
Besides this general and common outfit each man nearly always has some one article that nobody else carries but himself, and that, in his mind, is more important than anything else. I do not remember what Mr. Kerr’sindispensablewas, for we never walked together except this once, it being necessary that either one of us should stay at the station. Mine, however, was a pair of leather gloves, at which Dr. Good used to laugh; for we travelled often together. But they saved me much loss of blood and the pain of torn hands from the brambles and long briers that stretched across the path, and they also enabled me to protect my face from them by pushing them aside better than I could have done with bare hands. Dr. Good’s indispensable was a mosquito-net with canopy and sides which he also urged upon me as a necessity and which I insisted was a superfluity. There were no mosquitoes in our camping-places in the forest; but he used the net to protect against damp and against any slight motion of the air, for one takes cold very easily and the least cold is liable to induce fever. We had many a good-natured “scrap” over these hobbies; but neither of us ever converted the other. There was, however, one article with which I was always well supplied and for which Dr. Good himself usually thanked me before the end of a journey, and that was the indispensable safety-pin. I never foresaw any particular use for it, but many uses unforeseen invariably emerged as we travelled. Sometravellers carry a piece of oiled baize in a convenient and accessible place. It can be used to sit down on; for one can never sit on the ground, even if it is dry, because of insects. But its special use is for an apron, which is attached with safety-pins and worn in the morning through the dripping shrubbery. If one is wearing high shoes he can even keep his feet dry by this means.
The road that threads the forest from Batanga to Efulen was a narrow foot-path twelve inches wide and poorly beaten. The wet season had begun and the rains had been falling two or three weeks. The road was not even as good as we had expected; for Dr. Good, who had fully described it, had passed over it at the end of the dry season, when the road was at the best. The typical African road is a contorted line that vacillates and swerves to right and left, turning and twisting at acute angles continually, and often for no apparent reason, as if it had been made by some crazy person. But in such cases there was always an original reason even when it no longer exists. For instance, the native carrying a load finds a tree fallen across the path. It is easier for him with his load to go around it than to climb over it. But a log does not remain long in an African forest. Between insects and rot it is soon demolished. Meantime, along its length there has grown up a dense undergrowth; and rather than cut through this the native keeps to the path, now beaten, which passed around the log; and the new traveller wonders why the path should not be straight. It is estimated that an African road is a third longer in each mile by reason of its crookedness. But this is not the only peculiarity of a forest path. African trees have enormous roots, and much of them is above ground. This is the chief obstruction, and there are many others.
No two successive steps are the same length, nor uponthe same level. If the attention is diverted for a moment, one may stumble and fall. The road carefully avoids the hills and keeps down in the lowest parts. The natives, carrying loads, dislike climbing, but they have not the least aversion to mud; indeed, it has some advantages for their bare feet. One passes through every variety of it and every depth. The road often follows the bed of a stream for a distance, a foot or more under water or in mud, according to the season. Meanwhile, the part of the traveller that is above ground is kept moist by the dripping shrubbery that meets across the path. Many of the shrubs are covered with thorns, spines and hooks. One of the worst of these, armed with sharp spikes and not easy to see because it bears but little foliage, sprawls across the path just high enough to catch the average man under the chin, where it leaves a mark that looks as if it might have been made with a cross-cut saw. Then, again, there are long stretches of road that are not any worse than crossing a ploughed field after a rain. Every day, and sometimes several times a day, we forded streams, often wading to the waist, and we rather enjoyed it after the mud.
The deeper ravines we crossed on bridges. Bridge-building in Africa is no great triumph of mechanical engineering. The bridges which crossed the narrower ravines and gorges consisted simply of several long, slender poles laid down side by side. They ought to be on a level but are not. One is six inches or a foot higher than the other, and there is so much spring in them that the feat of crossing is equal to a tight-rope performance. Over extensively flooded areas where the water is too deep to wade, a bridge of single poles is supported in forked uprights at intervals of the length of the poles, and above the bridge a rope of vine is stretched to hold with the hand. It happened more than once that bysome mishap we tumbled into the stream below; but the natives were quick to fish us out.
The worst part of the journey was on the last day, through the new clearings which the natives had made for their gardens. In these the whole forest lay prostrate,—trees great and small, the tangled mass of vines, and all the débris made by its crashing fall. The whole enormous mass is left lying until the lighter parts of it dry: then it is burned over. This burning is repeated at long intervals until at length much of it is burned away. But by this time the natives are perhaps thinking of deserting it and making a new garden somewhere else, or they may have moved their town away. Meanwhile, they somehow reach the ground and plant their cassava which flourishes in the fresh, rich soil. The difficulty in an African garden is not to get things to grow, but to keep other things from growing. They never hesitate to fell the forest thus across the road, obstructing the caravans and bringing curses on their heads.
One might think on approaching a town through one of these clearings that it had been made as a formidable defense in time of war. To go through it is a tedious and exhausting trial. One moment the traveller is crawling on all fours under a log; then he walks up the inclined trunk of a tree a distance of fifty feet, then turns and follows one of its branches, from this leaps to a branch of another tree which he follows down to the trunk, which is perhaps ten feet above the ground, while below him are upright sticks or broken branches upon which he may be impaled if he falls, or at least badly bruised. From this he mounts a cross-log and proceeds downwards to another which he follows until it brings him five feet from the ground, when he jumps the rest of the way, crawls under another log, proceeds a few yards on the ground, mounts another log, follows it until hefinds himself again six feet off the ground and wondering how he will reach it; but the next moment he has already reached it and wonders how he got there. Then he does this all over again, and then again. I never passed through such a clearing without getting bruised or hurt in some way. The natives with their bare feet climb over these smooth logs better than the white man with his shoes unless they have rubber soles; in the morning before the dew has dried it is especially hard. It is much harder from the fact that we are no longer in the shade of the forest, but exposed to the fierce tropical sun unrelieved by the least breeze because of the surrounding forest.
A caravan with their heavy loads, walking through such a forest ruin, presents a picturesque scene to the spectator. Some are crawling under logs, some are climbing on top of them, half a dozen are walking in procession up an inclined trunk, some are walking a log ten feet in the air, others are twisting their way through a maze of branches and some have fallen to the ground. With such a clearing in mind, and remembering what has been said about African bridges, the reader will not be likely to ask the oft-repeated question, why donkeys and horses are not more used. The use of either would necessitate the carrying of a derrick with rope and tackle.
This recalls to my mind an occasion some years afterwards that afforded high amusement to some friends of mine. I had been home in America for several years and was about to go to Africa a second time when I received a visit from Mr. Kerr, who was home on furlough. He gave me an enthusiastic account of the work done by the German government in improving the Bulu roads,—although it was perhaps the road to Lolodorf rather than that to Efulen of which he was speaking. He declared that as compared with the first roads that he andI had travelled, I would never recognize it as an African road; for it was “grand,”—“simply grand.”
With an outburst of enthusiasm I replied that since I might be appointed to that station, and since the road was “simply grand,” I would buy a pair of donkeys at the Canary Islands and take them with me.
“Man alive!” he exclaimed, “one would think you had never been in Africa; a donkey couldn’t get over it.”
To my friends it was a hopeless paradox that a road could be “simply grand,” and yet be impassable to a donkey. Nevertheless, about that time they began using donkeys on the road to Efulen, so much had the roads been improved in the intervening years, and they have been using them more and more since that time. There is difficulty, however, in getting them over the streams and ravines, and I am not sure whether they are used to advantage in the wet season.
Only experience will teach a man to walk the bush-road with the least effort; and some never learn. I can remember yet how on that first morning I shrunk from the water and the mud, trying to keep my feet dry and my clothes clean. I think Mr. Kerr had more sense from the beginning. I, however, was in a state of rigidity, both physical and mental, that would soon have exhausted me. But after a while a kindly Providence took me in hand, sending upon me a rapid succession of blessings in disguise. The mud lay deep in the path and I was trying to straddle it as I walked, when, as I sprang forward to clear a wider space, some demon was evidently permitted to catch my foot and throw it up, with the result that I landed full length on my back in the mud. A few minutes later the same impalpable enemy tripped me and I fell headlong on my stomach. Still later we reached a broad, black, quiescent pond of water of the consistency of molasses.
“Can you swim?” said Dr. Good to me; “I forgot to ask you that.”
“Yes,” said I, thinking of the glowing description he had given me of the road, “there were several things you forgot to ask me, and some things you forgot to tell. But even if I could not swim in clear water, I could probably swim in that pond.”
We plunged in and were able to wade through it.
Shortly after this a drenching rain fell, a tropical downpour, that wet us to the skin. In this rain we stood and ate our first lunch, some fresh biscuits which one of the ladies at Batanga had baked that morning, saying as she tied them up for us in heavy oil paper, that it would be the last food of that sort that we would taste for a long time. But when the rain came on, the native carrier who had them in charge appropriated the oil paper to carry his shirt in, leaving the biscuits exposed to the rain. As we stood eating them while it still rained, it was with mitigated sorrow we reflected that it would be the last of that sort we would taste for a long time. I will admit that this was a dreary outset, but it was not unfortunate. My tenderfoot rigidity had completely relaxed for the remainder of the day. I cared not what happened afterwards, and walked without timidity, fearing neither mud nor water, nor height, nor depth, nor any such thing.
No amount of experience and practice in walking long distances on our public roads at home will insure success in walking a bush-path. In the latter there are constant obstructions and frequent annoyances, the obstructions requiring a peculiar physical aptitude, the annoyances a peculiar mental aptitude. The native possesses both aptitudes to a marvellous degree. The average native, carrying on his back a load of forty pounds, can keep up with the average white man carrying nothing. Yet, I have no doubt that on a turnpike, neither of them carryinganything, the average white man would equal the native and perhaps outwalk him. It must also be remembered that the white man is in a hostile climate in Africa, and is never normally strong.
We started in the morning as soon as it was light enough to see the path, that is, about six o’clock, and walked eight or nine hours a day, stopping an hour at noon. We walked at a very rapid pace, almost on a run where the path would permit. About four o’clock we stopped for the day, usually at a camping-ground made by the natives in carrying produce from the interior. These camps were open glades surrounded by the forest wall and ceiled by the blue sky.
Two or three nights we camped beside a flowing stream, a hidden brook, that “all night to the sleeping woods sang a quiet tune.”
After sitting ten minutes I followed along a short distance till I found an inviting spot where the pellucid stream widened and spread over a sand bottom, and there, all mud-bespattered, perspiring, weary and sore, I lay down in the cool, running stream, with my clothes on. Does the reader know what luxury is? Certainly not, unless after eight or nine hours of walking and wading over such a road he has lain down in a cool stream with his clothes on. I turn my face to one side and then the other, and let the flowing water caress my cheek, and as it washes away the mire from my clothing, it also soothes the weary limbs and sore joints and smoothes out the wrinkles of care; and my heart answers back in a song to the murmur of its music. This is the ancient Lethean stream in which the weary and the aged bathed and became oblivious of pain and sorrow. After a bath I get into woollen pajamas and slippers, and sit down a little later to the best repast of modern times—an absolutely unlimited quantity of boiled rice and corned beef. “Isthis really corned beef?” said I; “it tastes like angel.” Does the reader know what luxury is? Not unless after such a journey he has sat down to such a meal. For luxury is not something objective in the thing that we enjoy, but in the keenness of our relish; and that depends upon contrast—in this instance the contrast of rest and food with hard and hungry endurance. A few days after reaching New York, I attended a banquet at which was served I know not how many courses, the richest and the best. Objectively, it was everything that ingenuity could devise; only keen-edged appetite was wanting. And I was saying within me to my fellow guests: “Ah! I have a secret that you know not. This is only a taste of luxury; but if you would enjoy it to the full measure of your capacity, you must follow me eight hours through the fell roads of the jungle, bathe in running water, get into woollen pajamas, and then sit down in an arborealsalle à mangerto a banquet of unlimited rice and corned beef.”
We usually slept under booths made from the boughs of trees which we found in most of the camps. The most primitive bed and that which we sometimes used, was made by cutting slender, round poles six feet long and laying them side by side on two cross-sticks at the head and foot. The native carrier sleeps on this bed of poles with nothing under him and nothing over him; but when possible he keeps a fire beside him. We white men were wrapped in a blanket or two. But the use of such a bed is not wise when it can be avoided, and it is seldom necessary. More than once some one unable to sleep had to rise in the dark, find one or two bags in which loads were packed, spill the contents on the ground (making such a noise that one suddenly waking might suppose that an elephant had charged the camp) and spread the bags upon the bed in the hope of subduing the effect of its knots anddepressions and its general hardness. I soon discarded that sort of bed and preferred to bivouac in a hammock of stout and stiff canvas, suspended between two trees, with a rope stretched taut above it upon which I threw a large and light rubber blanket which formed a gable over me. This was, at least for me, the most comfortable and luxurious bush-bed that I ever slept in.
But in the early morning of the second day both comfort and luxury seemed remote and unrealizable ideas. There is a miserable chill in the forest at five o’clock in the morning that always makes one reluctant to leave his warm blankets; and on that morning it was raining. After coming out of the stream the night before, I had wrung out of my clothes what water I could, and they remained without further drying until I put them on in the morning to the accompaniment of chattering teeth, for they seemed as cold as ice. The boys’ fires had all gone out and we ate some boiled rice left over from the night before—ate it standing; for sitting down one’s clothes will get next to him, but standing up one can shrink away from them, or, at least, he can try. After some experience I was almost able to stand up in a suit of clothes without letting them touch me. Everything was wet and cold and the branches and shrubs shook water on us. There is a right way and a wrong way to conquer the ill-will of such a morning. The wrong way is to confess your misery, to shiver and shrink and try to save yourself. The right way is to plunge into it suddenly, get wet as quickly as possible, step lively, and make believe that you like it. The power of this mental attitude is astonishing, and with a little determination you will soon be master of the situation.
Before the end of the second day we discovered that the native stomach is made of the finest kind of rubber. Before leaving Batanga we had given to each carrier a supplyof food for seven days, and before the end of the second day, some of them had eaten it all. That meant hunger and trouble for all those “foolish virgins” for the rest of the journey. It also meant trouble for us. The others divided with them, as they nearly always do when this happens. But still they did not have enough and all were hungry before the end of the journey. In consequence they were too weak to carry their loads. They lagged behind and grumbled continually, and sometimes they seemed on the point of refusing to go on. The difference between a good carrier and a poor one is often simply this, that the one stops eating when he is full and the other stops only when the supply of food is exhausted.