IVBUSH PERILS
“By what I have read in books, I think few that have held a pen were ever really wearied, or they would write of it more strongly.”—Robert Louis Stevenson.
“By what I have read in books, I think few that have held a pen were ever really wearied, or they would write of it more strongly.”—Robert Louis Stevenson.
Several months later Dr. Good and I returned from the interior to Batanga, passing over the road at its very worst. It was near the end of the wet season. For many weeks the rains had fallen day and night. The forest was flooded; the streams were rushing rivers, and the rivers had far overspread their banks. Beyond these floods were marshes which were still worse. Where the water was too deep to be waded, temporary bridges such as I have described had been constructed, consisting of a single line of poles extending from one support to another, sometimes two or three feet under the water, with a rope of vine stretched a few feet above that one might hold with his hand. These bridges were more simple than ingenious, and more ingenious than safe. A number of times the vine above broke, upon which we lost our balance and fell into the water but were rescued by a life-saving crew of the carriers. For in crossing the worst places we always waited for the carriers. Nor did we proceed until we saw all the loads over safely. One or two crossed at a time and the others, having laid down their loads, stood by to be of service in case of accident. In one place when we were crossing a rushing stream in which the bridge was buried two feet under the water, the line of poles beneath ourfeet suddenly came to an end, having been swept away by the current, and we crossed the deepest part on the upper vine alone going hand over hand until our feet came in contact with another pole. But this let us down into the water almost to our necks. In another place, crossing a considerable stretch of water, the bridge was such that Dr. Good preferred to cross by climbing the trees and passing along the interlacing branches.
We were seven days on the way between Efulen and Batanga, including a Sunday on which we rested. I was a convalescent, having recently been sick with a very severe fever that had kept me in bed for more than a month, and I was still weak. Indeed, the reason for hurrying to the coast at this time instead of waiting for the dry season was chiefly my need of a physician. The first day I walked four hours very slowly and could do no more; but my strength increased greatly on the way and we walked further each day.
On that journey we had to use the cutlasses very often to clear the road so as to make it passable; and one day we found the road so flooded that we were obliged to leave it and for several hours we cut our way through the matted undergrowth where there was no road; but it was very slow work. That same day Dr. Good, in jumping over a muddy place, lighted on a slippery stick that was hidden beneath the surface and fell headlong. I was following so close behind that I was already in mid-air when he fell; and, of course, I tripped over him and fell too. For a few seconds at least we were a sorry sight. There was a stream near by, however, and we washed away the portion of German territory that clung to us, and made a presentable toilet.
But Dr. Good had fallen on a projecting root and had hurt his side quite badly. It was like him to say nothing about it until, as we stood at the stream, I observedthat he was pale. Then he told me that he had hurt himself and that there was a pain in his side. He thought that a band tied around his waist would relieve him; so I peeled a strip of bark four inches wide from a tree and tied it tight around him, over his coat, making a bow at his back. Considered æsthetically it left much to be desired, but it served the purpose. He walked with difficulty the first hour or two; then the pain gradually subsided, and although he was bruised, it occasioned him no further trouble.
On the last night of our long immurement in the forest, we camped for the first time in an open glade where the sun had warmed and dried the ground, and the wood also was dry enough to enable us to have a big camp-fire. We kept the fire all night, and for the first time on the way got our clothes well dried. Not only were they dry; they were even warm when we dressed in the morning. We were in high spirits and greatly enjoyed our breakfast. But immediately upon starting out, and before our blood was in vigorous circulation, we came to a long stretch of water covering acres of ground. We were greatly surprised at this, for Dr. Good knew this place and had not expected any such thing. The explanation, as we found two hours later, was that a little town had just been built near by and the people, being at war with their neighbours, had dammed a stream so as to surround their town with water and marsh for defense against the approach of their enemies. This unsightly and disgusting place they were very proud of as serving admirably their purpose of safety.
When we came to the water we waded in and walked on and on not knowing its extent. But at last we were in almost to our shoulders, and Dr. Good suggested that I should wait while he looked for the road, for he knew the way better than I. It was long before he found it and Istood for an hour in the water. I had never felt any ill effects from wading water, but now I was standing, not wading; and I had not done any walking that morning to invigorate me. Before we had proceeded far after leaving the water, my joints were stiff and muscles sore, especially the tendons of the heel and the knee, and every step cost pain. But we had the longest day of all before us, and our food supply being exhausted, we must reach Batanga that night. It was a day I shall never forget. To the pain of aching joints and sore muscles was soon added that of exhaustion. It happened that I had been quoting Heine and passing severe moral verdicts upon him for saying somewhere—“Psychical pain is more easily borne than physical; and if I had my choice between a bad conscience and a bad tooth, I should choose the former.” This, no doubt, is pure paganism; but now when I was suffering something of the weakness and pain that poor Heine endured, I am afraid that if I had been offered a bad conscience in exchange for physical suffering, with the sure promise that I could get my better conscience back again at the beach, I might have succumbed to the temptation. Thank God that in the crises we seldom have the choice. At any rate, Heine did not seem so much of a pagan that day as when I sat by the warm camp-fire the night before descanting on another’s pain, and Dr. Good did not have to listen to further moral dissertations on my part. Hours before we reached the beach my legs were fainting under me but still we walked on with long strides and at the usual rapid pace, threading the forest while hour was added to hour.
We did not take our usual noonday rest, for we both knew that if I should stop walking for a little while I would be unable to go on. We usually chatted together as we walked, but that day from noon until we reached the beach, I do not recall that a word was spoken. Dr.Good was too wise to express the sympathy that I knew he felt. We had always taken turns in setting the pace; but at noon I said to him: “You go ahead; I am not equal to the extra mental exertion of setting the pace: it will be easier for me to keep up with you.”
The last hour of that interminable day was through a grass field where we were exposed to the sun and the heat. The rank grass was much higher than our heads and intercepted the sea-breeze. It also cut my arms and face till I was covered with blood; for I was too tired to protect myself. Each successive step required a new decision, and an effort involving the utmost conjoint exertion of mind and body. My teeth were set and I was breathing audibly. At last we entered a native town and as we passed through the long street, the people and their chief, Bivinia, came trooping forward with cordial greetings and hands extended towards us; but I neither extended my hand nor replied to their salutations. Indeed, my mind was so concentrated on the effort that it required to keep on walking that I was only half-conscious of the presence and attention of the natives; they were like forms moving to and fro in an uneasy dream. But the longest day has an end. We reached Dr. Good’s house and I threw myself into a chair while he dispatched a messenger to Mr. Gault who lived two miles further, asking Mr. Gault to send men with a hammock to carry me on to his house where I was going to stay.
It is doubtful whether one ever recovers from such an unnatural straining of nerves and muscles. The muscles in a few days may regain their elasticity and the joints their suppleness; but somewhat of the power of endurance is lost and especially the quality of resiliency, the power of quickly recovering from mental or physical prostration, leaving one an easier victim of virulent disease; and nerves so overwrought may from time to timewreak the vengeance of untold misery through all the after years.
During the following dry season we employed a force of men in making a new road, the present road from Batanga to Efulen. It is practically straight, and therefore much shorter than the old road, so that a good walker can make the journey in three days. Moreover, it follows higher ground and is more dry. We also cut down many trees along the way, which relieved the gloom, although the road still passes beneath a leafy arcade sufficient to protect from the sun. We improved the bridges and wherever possible made a bridge by felling a tree. But the native roads, except the few that have been improved by white men, are still such as I have described. It happened also that most of our journeys were at first made in the wet season. After the first year, however, that was no longer necessary, and we began to feel that the pioneer period was drawing to a close. But I presume that those who now live at Efulen and other interior stations, in journeys to the further interior, especially to towns off the main road, if they travel in the wet season, find just such roads as we first travelled.
The last time I walked from Efulen during my first term in Africa, I enjoyed the journey. The forest was more dry than I had believed it could be. The ground was strewn with leaves suggestive of our autumn. Nor was it dark and depressing as before. Upon the forest-canopy of green, supported by tall columns of sombre gray, the light danced and played like sunshine on rippling water and shone through in silvery streams and shifting golden bars. The forest floor was a humus of soft mould and light, dry leaves. The low green undergrowth, closing the path before and behind me, now that it was not dripping with water, was attractive, and gave a pleasant sense of privacy combining with the subtlesense of companionship with the vast life of the great forest. For it was no longer the dead, repellent jungle of some months ago, but a real forest in which one loves to walk alone, a forest full of mystery and spiritual suggestion, whose stillness speaks to us in a language that we strive to understand, or gives, as Tennyson says, “A hint of somewhat unexprest:”
“’Tis not alone the warbling woods,The starred abysses of the sky,The silent hills, the stormy floods,The green, that fills the eye.—These only do not move the breast;Like some wise Artist, Nature givesThrough all her works, to each that lives,A hint of somewhat unexprest.”
“’Tis not alone the warbling woods,The starred abysses of the sky,The silent hills, the stormy floods,The green, that fills the eye.—These only do not move the breast;Like some wise Artist, Nature givesThrough all her works, to each that lives,A hint of somewhat unexprest.”
“’Tis not alone the warbling woods,The starred abysses of the sky,The silent hills, the stormy floods,The green, that fills the eye.—These only do not move the breast;Like some wise Artist, Nature givesThrough all her works, to each that lives,A hint of somewhat unexprest.”
“’Tis not alone the warbling woods,
The starred abysses of the sky,
The silent hills, the stormy floods,
The green, that fills the eye.—
These only do not move the breast;
Like some wise Artist, Nature gives
Through all her works, to each that lives,
A hint of somewhat unexprest.”
In setting out from Efulen we always had a “palaver” with the carriers which in one instance, at least, threatened to become a fight. Dr. Good on his first journey before my arrival in Africa had paid the carriers a certain amount for the round trip; for they had to carry their loads both ways. One can scarcely overestimate the authority ofprecedentin Africa. The citation of a precedent is sufficient to justify any subsequent action that may be to the advantage of him who cites it, even though the action be flagitious and the precedent only remotely relevant. A single precedent may establish a custom and established custom is a despot from whom there is no appeal, and whose authority transcends moral law. A Kruman, if asked why he does this or that, thinks that he gives the most lucid explanation when he answers: “It be fashion for we country.” We had expected to pay our carriers from Batanga to Efulen less than Dr. Good had paid, since they were carrying loads only one way. But his one trip had established theamount of pay, and at the first mention of lower prices there was a storm of protest accompanied by scathing moral observations. It made no difference to them, they averred, whether or not they carried loads both ways; they would just as soon walk with a load as without one, and indeed a little rather. We had no alternative, so we paid the full price of a round trip; but we stipulated that if at any time we should wish to send loads from the interior to Batanga, we should require the carriers to take them without any additional pay; and to this they cordially agreed.
It was seldom that we had anything but mail to send to Batanga, except when one of ourselves was going, and then we usually had four or five loads. But there were always several times this number of carriers. Some few, therefore, must be selected to carry the loads, while the rest walked light. It was natural, I suppose, that when they knew a white man was going back with them to Batanga they should all pretend to be sick in order to escape carrying a load. So sure as they heard me coming towards their house in the early morning to choose several carriers, immediately they presented such a spectacle of suffering as was never seen in any hospital. It was very perplexing for almost invariably some one or two of them were really sick and quite unfit to carry loads. On one occasion as I approached, the scene was more heartrending than usual. There were means and cries and shrieks such as might issue from a railroad wreck in which a score of broken and mangled human beings were pinioned by the wreckage. I found them sitting and lying around in every posture of pain. Some were nursing sore feet and sprained ankles, some had violent attacks of indigestion, several had fever, and one had a fit. Each one was occupied with his own suffering and betrayed no consciousness of my presence.
After looking around I walked out without speaking. I made a bold guess as to the sick and the well; and returning a few minutes later, followed by several workmen with the loads, I advanced as if by some occult means I knew exactly the degree of sincerity or insincerity on the part of each, and placed the heaviest load in front of a certain man, saying quietly: “You will carry this load.” Now it happened that this was the only sick man in the crowd and he was quite unfit to carry anything. The truth is that the man, being really sick, did not call in the assistance of dramatic art, and he made less fuss than any of the others. We were not many hours on the way before I discovered the mistake I had made. It is very difficult to make any change on the road, and is regarded as something less than fair. To accomplish it without a mutiny one must assume a terrifying countenance of the utmost ferocity and cannibalism. In this I was evidently successful; for late in the afternoon I suddenly called a halt, waited until all the men came up, and then ordered a man to take the load off the back of the sick man and put it on the man who that morning had been seized with a fit at my approach. This I did with the more relish because I had heard him chuckling about it along the way and telling the joke on the white man.
We seldom saw an animal in the forest, although we knew they were there. The only monkey that we saw on our first journey Mr. Kerr shot and gave to the carriers who ate every part of it, inside and out, including the skin—after burning off the hair. We sometimes heard the blood-curdling night-cry of the leopard; but we never saw one. On several occasions when I was alone I heard elephants plunging along the path before me, or suddenly discovered their tracks at my feet, so fresh that the water was still trickling into them. The elephant is not dangerous unless one comes upon him suddenly and startlesor frightens him; but if he “charges,” he is terrible. A chief near Efulen was one day walking in the forest at the head of a hunting party. At a point where the path suddenly swerved around the upturned root of a tree, he found himself face to face with an elephant. Before he had time to fire the elephant instantly charged. It put its tusk through his body and then trampled him to death under its feet. The natives taught me, when I heard elephants ahead, to stop and shout until there was complete silence; which meant that they had hidden in the forest and I could pass along the path in perfect safety, no matter how near they might be. But the first time that this occurred, and the second time, I made the natives prove their advice by going ahead themselves, which they never hesitated to do.
In the wet season I always walked in company with the caravan; but in the dry season I preferred to walk alone, and often left the carriers far behind me, scattered along the road in different groups. At a fork in the road I always threw a handful of fresh leaves upon the road that I followed, as a sign to the carriers that they might be sure to take the same way. Never but once did they fail to follow me. On that occasion some of the carriers were boys of a strange tribe, the Galway, more used to waterways than to bush roads. Until the last evening they had walked behind others who were familiar with bush travel and whom they could follow heedlessly. But that evening it happened that the Galway were ahead and they took the wrong road, not observing my sign of the leaves on the path, and the whole caravan went astray except two carriers who were far behind and separated from the others. To follow their misfortune to the issue, the Galway got separated from the rest of the caravan and arrived at Batanga two days late, famished with hunger and frightened half to death.
Meanwhile, I had walked on far ahead until I thought that the carriers might require all the daylight that was left to catch me, and then I stopped and waited for them; though I had not yet reached the camp. As time passed and no carriers appeared I began to feel uneasy. The chill of the evening was approaching, and I had not even a coat; so I began to walk back and forth rapidly to keep warm. Finally, two carriers arrived. One of them had my food, which was fortunate; but the other had nothing that I wanted on the road. The lost Galway had my bed and extra clothing, and even the matches. We waited for them anxiously and called loudly, but there was no answer. Then swiftly, as always in the forest of the tropics, the day turned into night: “At one stride comes the dark.” A heavy, palpable darkness, like smoke, enshrouded us and rose higher till it blotted out the leafy canopy and blackened the very sky. The opacity of the darkness was such that we could not see each other, nor could I see my hand when I placed it before my eyes.
For a while I forgot the loss of the other carriers in thankfulness for the company of these two men. For, however kindly the mood of the forest by day, or however joyful the camp-fire by night in congenial company, yet, to one alone through the night, without comfort or means of rest, and with the possibility of being lost, the forest is truly dreadful. One in such a plight interprets the forest through the medium of his misery and his fear. The intolerable vastness of his prison dungeon suggests the “outer darkness,” and the experience of a soul forsaken. I was miserably cold and had nothing to protect me; nor had I a bed except a rubber blanket. I kept walking back and forth on a bit of path a few yards long, notwithstanding that I had walked all day. There was but little rest. Occasionally I threw myself down on therubber blanket but was so cold that before long I rose again and began walking. Fortunately I was in unusually good health, for Africa, or the exposure might have resulted even more seriously than it did. My cook, Eyambe, a Batanga man, who had worked for us at Efulen for several months, possessed the remnant of a shirt, so much prized that he had carried it with him to the bush, lest his numerous relatives, male and female, should wear it out in his absence. He came to me in the darkness feeling his way, and said, “Mr. Milligan, my shirt, you must take him and wear him, please. This bush he no be too bad for we black man; but my heart cry for white man.”
I took it, of course, and wore it. But the cheer that I derived from the kindness of his heart was greater than the poor comfort of the shirt.
I thanked God when morning dawned at last; but it is unnecessary to say that I was in poor condition for walking next day, the last day of the journey. I knew that the exposure would bring on fever and I walked more rapidly than usual so as to reach Batanga as soon as possible. I sometimes even ran, as if in precipitate flight from a pursuing beast. The part of the road over which I passed that day was quite new and poorly cleared. My clothing may not have been stout enough to withstand the thorns and briers which I encountered; or else, in my hurry, I was reckless. At any rate, when I emerged from the forest, behind Mr. Gault’s house, one leg of my trousers was gone from above the knee, and the other leg was also exposed through several rents, the remainder of the trousers being fastened with numerous safety-pins. I was also scratched and bleeding more than on any previous trip.
As I turned and looked back from the beach towards the gloomy and sullen forest, in the vivid realization ofthe exposure of that long night and the fever which I knew was imminent, I had the feeling which Stanley describes when he and his long caravan emerged from the dark prison forest after the immurement of several months, in which scores of their comrades had died by the way, the whole caravan now enfeebled and wasted with hunger, the black, glossy skin turned an ashen gray. They ascended a hill and first looking up yearningly towards the bright blue sky, they then turned with a sigh and looked back over the sable forest that heaved away to the infinity of the west. In their sudden exaltation they shook their clenched fists at it, uttering imprecations, and with gestures of defiance and hate. They apostrophized it for its cruelty to themselves and their kinsmen; they compared it to hell, and accused it of the murder of a hundred of their comrades. But the forest which lay vast as a continent before them, and drowsy, like a great beast, answered not a word, but rested in its infinite sullenness, remorseless and implacable.
I was not mistaken in my apprehension of fever. I did not return to Efulen again. One fever followed another in quick succession, becoming at length so serious that my fellow missionaries at Batanga united in urging me not to risk another attack. An English steamer on the outward voyage called just at that time and I went south to Gaboon, where I sailed on a French steamer for Marseilles and thence home.
Little did I think when I was leaving Efulen for a few days, as I supposed, that I was really taking a long leave of Efulen and Africa, not again to see either for four years, and never again to see Dr. Good. That last morning, when I was setting out for the beach, he walked with me down the long Efulen hill to the foot, where we stood perhaps half an hour, formulating our expectations and making the clearest-cut plans, none of which wererealized, although they pertained to the immediate future.
The element of accident is a constant factor in Africa, that continually changes the course of our reckoning and overturns our surest calculations. Accidents are no more numerous there than elsewhere, but they are more serious. Climbing a mountainside, a slip of the foot is fraught with more danger than on a level road. In the hostile climate of Africa, the smallest accident, a moment’s incaution or forgetfulness on your own part or on the part of others, may change the entire future. Elsewhere the best-laid plans of men have about an equal chance with the best-laid plans of mice, if the observation of Burns is to be trusted. But in Africa the probability of the future is entirely with the mice.
While I was in Africa a second time and living in Gaboon, two hundred miles further south on the coast, I visited Efulen once more. The road was much more improved than when I had seen it last. The sun shone through the arcade of vines and branches and formed upon the pathway a filigree of gold and silver light. The mode of travel was different accordingly. It was the best time of the year and there was a happy party of eleven, so that the journey was like a continuous picnic. Four of the party were ladies, three of whom were carried in hammocks and one rode a donkey. Besides, and chiefly, there was a very sweet little girl, two years old—a little splash of golden sunshine in the gray forest light, a dream of home, a fragment of a song⸺ Ah me! how lonely one becomes for the sight of a white child when he has lived some years in the jungles! Much of the time the ladies were walking and the hammocks empty. The hammock is suspended from a long bamboo pole borne upon the shoulders of two carriers. But the carriers must be relieved frequently, for it is dreadfully hard work. Six ofthe strongest native men are required for one hammock. Little Lois also had her special hammock, with a firm floor in it, so that she could sit upright, and she was perfectly happy when riding through the forest.
LITTLE FRANCES, BORN IN AFRICA.Ah me, how lonely one becomes for the sight of a white child when he has lived some years in the jungles!
LITTLE FRANCES, BORN IN AFRICA.Ah me, how lonely one becomes for the sight of a white child when he has lived some years in the jungles!
LITTLE FRANCES, BORN IN AFRICA.
Ah me, how lonely one becomes for the sight of a white child when he has lived some years in the jungles!
Several towns had been built along the way and in one of them we stopped each night, where we occupied native houses and slept on native beds of straight bamboo poles covered with armfuls of grass—as good a bed as one could desire. The numerous ticks in the grass were converted into bed-ticks—such was our resourcefulness of expedient. The only dislikable part of the journey was rising so early in the morning when we could have slept on for hours, after the walk of the preceding day. But an incident of that journey impressed it distinctly upon my mind that there is some advantage in eating breakfast before daylight. One morning we had an oatmeal breakfast. The day dawned upon two tardy boarders before they had eaten and they were horrified at discovering that the oatmeal was full of vermiform animalcules. Of course, they could not eat it and had the poorer breakfast in consequence, and the other nine thought that it served them quite right for being so late. A doubt has always lurked in the recesses of my mind as to whether the joke was really on the two or on the nine.
We did not, as in former days, keep steadily to a regular pace without stopping, even for hours at a time, and walking in comparative quiet. For the hammock carriers go very rapidly, on a dog-trot, continually shouting, and a white man follows immediately behind each hammock. They repeat a regular call and response, half song, half shout, as if to sustain their animation and courage. What wonderful voices they have! The forest, startled from her deep repose as we pass along, rebounds with shout and answering echo, while we dash onover height and depth, over rock and stream and mire, for an hour. Then, out of breath and in copious perspiration, we sit down for fifteen or twenty minutes, and at the word of command we are off again with a dash and a shout. It is all very pleasant and a great improvement on the old way, although one pays very little attention to the forest and is wholly oblivious to its moods. But the old way is still the regular way on all roads except those few which the white man has undertaken to improve.
And this disposition to “improve” everything he puts his hand to is a radical difference between the native and the white man. The mental habit of the native is contentment with things as they are; in which he is far more happy than fortunate. He would let this old world, or this old “bush” as he calls it, stay as it is to the end of time. The unhappy restlessness of the white man, his dissatisfaction with what he has and his longing for what he has not, his eagerness for change and “improvement,” the native is sometimes disposed to regard as a morbid mental disease. But the greatest wonder of it is that the white man includes the native himself in his program of improvement. He finds him a denizen of the forest, his mental habitudes like her changing moods, now sullen and cruel, now gentle and cheerful for a little while, partaking of her darkness mingled here and there with broken beams of light; and as he clears a way through the deep forest making the darkness light, so he labours that a gleam of heaven’s light may shine down into the benighted native soul; that it may lighten the path of his destiny more and more, and lead him on, in ways of purity and peace, till the gleam become the “perfect day.”