Boy with Bow
Many natives now have guns, usually flint-locks, which have come into the country through the Portuguese trade. I remember examining one of these guns belonging to a Ntumbi villager; it was immensely long in the barrel and had ‘Tower’ and ‘G.R.’ engraved on the lock. They imply the elsewhere obsolete powder-horn, which one sometimes sees very neatly carved, and where a more advanced stage of weapon has been reached, the percussion-caps are carried in the hollowed head of a club made of some hard wood, which receptacle has an opening fitted with a lid or stopper on one side, and a small hole at the top through which they can be shaken out one by one.
The Yaos observe a certain amount of ritual before starting on a hunting expedition, or, in fact, any journey; this is fully detailed in Africana. The man intending to set out goes to his chief, who consults the oracle of the ufa cone on his behalf, and tells him to defer the journey, if the answer is unfavourable. Dreams are also, as already stated, much relied on in deciding matters of this sort, and unfavourable omens, such as kicking against a stump, or meeting a snake, may send the party back even after it has started. If all is well, however, the chief gives the applicant a talisman to keep him safe—either a thread to be tied round his head or arm, or a small vessel of oil to be carried with him. While he is absent, his wife must not bathe, nor anoint herself with oil, nor even wash her face, and if she has a dream during this period, must be very careful about presenting an offering to the spirits.
The Angoni sometimes hunt with dogs—a better class of animals than the miserable, yelping mongrels which infest the villages. A boy who sold me a pair of tusks of the bush pig (Potamochoerus, a smaller and lighter animal than the European wild boar) told me with great pride that the nguluwe had been killed by his dog. This same dog, if I remember rightly, once attended school with his master—I suppose to keep him out of harm’s way, as an impi of the Machinga was supposed to be on the war-path. He was black, about the size of a small setter, with longer and rougher hair than most of the village dogs (which look like remote and degenerate descendants of fox-terriers, and are white or yellow, or both mixed), and in shape he was more like an Eskimo dog than anything else I can think of. He had on a hide collar, and was led by a string, and altogether seemed valued and well treated. Some young men in one of these same villages told me that they hunted elephants with dogs ‘in Chekusi’s country,’ and usually lost a great many. Men carry whistles, made of a small buck’s horn, to call dogs with.
Traps for game are of many kinds and varying degrees of ingenuity. For large animals, such as the elephant, hippo, or buffalo, there is the pitfall, dug with sloping sides, and sometimes planted with sharp stakes at the bottom, which is such a frequent cause of accident to unwary travellers. It is covered over with reeds and the ground made to look as natural as possible. Old disused pits are no less dangerous, because the grass and shrubs grow over them and hide them from view. They are dug right in the track of the animal in a place where it is found to pass often—as in going down to a stream to drink. In former times, fences (sometimes extending over miles of country) were made to guide buck into these pits.
Another trap for lions or leopards is made by erecting two parallel fences of stout stakes. A heavy log is supported at the further end between the fences and the bait placed beneath it, so that it cannot be seized without pushing aside the slight support; the animal is then killed by the falling log. Smaller traps are set for the different kinds of wild-cat, and baited with mice. Another trap often set for hippos or elephants is a heavy log hung vertically above the pathway, with a poisoned spear fixed in its lower end; the animal treads on a catch which releases the string holding the weighted spear. The poison for spears and arrows is in most cases strophanthus.
Going along one of the paths leading through the bush, one sometimes notices a curious little arrangement of sticks and string, like a narrow gate, about eighteen inches high. This is a msampa trap, designed to catch a buck by the leg, or smaller animals, which run close to the ground, by the neck. A cord with a running noose at one end is made fast by the other to the top of a springy sapling, which is bent down and kept in position by an easily released catch; the noose is then stretched open between the upright sticks, but so as to slip off easily as soon as the animal treads on the catch, when the sapling flies up and immediately tightens the cord.
Several kinds of smaller traps are set for field-rats and mice; one is a long narrow funnel, woven of slips of bamboo, with the ends pointing inwards at the mouth, so that a rat can get in but not out again; the stretching of the slips narrows the entrance, and there is no room to turn round. Some of these traps are woven of mapira stalks or palm fibre. It might be supposed that any mouse could easily gnaw its way out; but the trap is not set and left; it is placed in the creatures’ run, and the grass is beaten to drive them into it, when they are at once taken out and despatched. Sometimes the animal is driven into a trap like this by a dog.