And lastly, but not leastly, this diabolical fowl, although it can hang head downwards in a temperature of 140° for many hours without showing any signs of inconvenience other than a slightly intensified complexion, and although it greets with contumely blows inflicted with the various missiles to be found at a moment's notice in an average tent, yet, should it be left with natives other than its rightful owner for one short hour, it is so overcome with modesty that it reverts rapidly and without perceptible residue into its original invisible components.
The extent to which the kuku enters into one's very existence in Africa is, I feel sure, a sufficient excuse for this digression. In fact, I believe that, were it not for the counter-irritation produced by the camp goats, I should have "kuku" on the brain.
Having successfully wrestled with the athletic cause of this digression, and unsuccessfully with a prehistoric gun that a neighbouring chief brought me for medical treatment, and dreamt that a rooster with 10 ft. tusks was dancing the double shuffle on my chest, I descended into the valley, and after two hours' walking reached the Semliki, a fine river, here sixty to seventy yards wide, with a current of about five miles an hour. When I had, with the greatest difficulty, wedged myself in a very long, very unstable, and appallingly leaky piece of firewood (called by courtesy a canoe), and had with still greater difficulty dissuaded fifteen gentlemen from risking the voyage in my company, in the lucid intervals of the amazement with which I viewed the frantic efforts of my Charon (for such he was like to prove) to keep the stick's head up-stream, I gathered from a benevolent philanthropist on shore that a woman had been taken that morning by a crocodile from the very spot where we came to land, and that on no account must I permit my boys to go to the water's edge, as the crocodiles were very numerous and very daring. However, suitably cheered by this information, and in defiance of all such paltry laws of nature as gravity, we eventually did succeed in landing safely on the other side; how or why I cannot say, as only the two ends of the canoe were in the water, the middle, where I sat, being slightly raised above the surface. I suppose the whole concern had warped. Whatever the cause, I did not fancy trusting my baggage in her, so I sent up the river, and after much yelling and more delay, another more serviceable concern was produced. Having fixed on a place for my tent, I left the boys to attend to the passage of my belongings, and went out in search of dinner.
The plain, which here is about six miles wide, is covered with short grass and dotted with clumps of euphorbia and thorn-bush, and is the home of countless reedbuck and herds of Uganda kob. During the rains it is the playground of troops of elephant and of the few survivors of the teeming herds of buffalo that formerly roamed over all this country. I had no difficulty in bringing two bucks to grass, as the country offered magnificent stalking-ground, and the meat made a very agreeable change after the everlasting mutton. The Uganda kob (Cobus Thomasi) very closely resembles the pookoo (Cobus Vardoni), though its coat, which is of a beautiful reddish colour, is less foxy and not so long in the hair as that of the pookoo. They both have the regular gait of the waterbuck, that so forcibly reminds one of our own red deer. But whereas the pookoo never seems to run in herds of more than twenty or thirty, I have seen as many as three hundred Thomasi together. The leading buck of this herd, which I shot, had horns 20 in. in length.
Here, as elsewhere, I was much impressed by the two different types of native, the sharp, intelligent, almost delicate features and the lithe limbs of the aristocrats (of Galla origin) contrasting very forcibly with the coarse, squat, ape-like appearance of the rabble. Some of the lower class have really no ostensible claims to being human, beyond the ability to produce fire. Covering even of the most rudimentary description is totally ignored by both sexes. Leaving the Semliki, we travelled west to the hills of Mboga, and shortly left the plain below, rising into a country of miniature cañons, intersected by numerous ravines full of elephant-grass. Here we camped and sent out scouts in all directions to search for njojo (the local name for elephant). I had just made myself comfortable when news was brought of elephant to the south, so I set off without delay, only to find a herd of small cows. On my return to camp my boys told me that there was an elephant quite close, and pointed him out, standing under a tree in the middle of the elephant-grass in the ravine at our feet. As the sun was very hot, I concluded that he was likely to stop where he was, and setting a boy on an ant-hill to watch him, I sat down to lunch. He did stop where he was till I had finished lunch, and then moved on, and as it was useless to go into the grass, 15 to 25 ft. high, without a definite landmark such as the tree would have proved, I was fain to dodge about, watching him, when I could get an occasional glimpse, and to wait for another chance. Several times I lost sight of him altogether, and then again would see an ear. At last, as he appeared to be coming near the stream, which here ran close underneath the bank on which I was standing, I went down through the thorns and grass and waited, but in vain. Again I mounted the bank, but could see no signs of him till I was turning campwards in despair, when my boy saw the grass move, and this time quite close to the stream. Down we scrambled once more and stood in the bed of the stream listening. Then the crack of a twig and the waving of the tops of the grass showed that he was coming, and he glided past a slight gap in the thicket like some spectre, but I could not get a shot, although within twenty yards. I never can understand how they manage to glide through the most tangled jungles almost without sound unless they are alarmed, when it seems as if all hell were loosed. I followed quickly down the stream, the grass now completely hiding him, and suddenly came on him drinking in a small mud-hole, at about fifteen yards distance. He gave me a half side-shot, and I fired at his head, giving him a second as he swung round. Down he came like an avalanche, and lay thrashing the reeds with his trunk. Fearing that he might get up again, I approached to give him the coup de grâce. I was already within six yards, but still unable to see him, when a cold puff on the back of my neck gave me warning of a chance in the wind. I stepped back as he struggled to his feet, and his great trunk came quivering forward within two yards of my face. Again the wind steadied, and as I stood motionless as a rock, he failed to see me, swung round, and made off. Three shots I poured into him, then waited, sick at heart, listening to the crash-crash as he went away, till again I heard that welcome roar of rending tree and rush. He was down: a long gurgle and a sob, and all was over. Although a small elephant, he carried beautiful teeth, 7 ft. 9 in. and 7 ft. (tip broken), and weighing 72 lbs. and 69 lbs.
I reached camp just at dusk, and found that Changera, one of the Mboga chiefs, had come in to see me. His country lies between Tavara's and Kavalli's, and stretches from the top of the Congo Semliki watershed to the Semliju. The following morning I went down to see how they were cutting out the tusks, and found that hordes of Balegga had swarmed down from the hills for the meat. A weird sight it was: stark naked savages with long greased hair (in some cases hanging down on their shoulders) were perched on every available inch of the carcase, hacking away with knives and spears, yelling, snarling, whooping, wrestling, cursing, and munching, covered with blood and entrails; the new arrivals tearing off lumps of meat and swallowing them raw, the earlier birds defending their worms in the form of great lumps of fat paunch and other delicacies; while others were crawling in and out of the intestines lake so many prairie marmots. Old men, young men, prehistoric hags, babies, one and all gorging or gorged; pools of blood, strips of hide, vast bones, blocks of meat, individuals who had not dined wisely but too well, lay around in bewildering profusion; and in two short hours all was finished. Nothing remained but the gaunt ribs like the skeleton of a shipwreck, and a few disconsolate-looking vultures perched thereon.
The Balegga live in the hills to the north of Mboga proper, though many of them are now under Changera, having fled south from the Belgians. They are good specimens of the real Central African savage, rather short, but well-set-up, innocent of clothing as a babe unborn, and blessed with an inordinate and insatiable craving for meat, which at that time was, if possible, intensified by the failure of their crops, owing to the drought. They wear their hair in long thin plaits, liberally smeared with grease, which gives them a very wild appearance, especially when, as I noticed in some cases, it hangs down over their face. In the intervals of gorging and hacking, they amused themselves by smearing the caked blood over their hair and bodies--a proceeding that gave general satisfaction. I gathered from them that many had lately come south to Mboga (which is at present administered from Fort Gerry) to avoid the persecution of the Belgians, who had killed, as they said, great numbers both of them and their neighbouring tribes to the north. They indignantly denied my soft impeachment of cannibalism, but from extraneous sources I gathered that any lightly grilled portion of my anatomy that might happen to wander round their way would be, so to speak, a "gone coon."
The neighbouring chief, Tabara by name, apparently suffering from that troublesome complaint known to the faculty as "swelled head," amused himself for the next two days by sending in an intermittent fusillade of insolence; "it was not his business to come and see every white man who came into the country," etc., etc., ad nauseam. As I had never sent for him, being unaware even of the gentleman's existence, and as I found on inquiry that he was a chief independent of Kasagama, and owing allegiance to the official at Fort Gerry only, I concluded that my mubaka[#] provided by Kasagama was the cause of the trouble, or that he imagined I was Belgian. I therefore sent a message to him to the effect that I had no doubt he was a most admirable individual, but, strange to relate, till the arrival of his message I had been unaware of his existence; that my object in coming to the country was to shoot elephant, and not to interview obscure natives. The effect was remarkable: the following morning he turned up with a numerous following, carrying an umbrella and a very dangerous camp-stool, and presented me with sundry goats, fowls, and other edibles.
[#] A sort of courier.
The prevailing type of elephant in these parts differs so essentially from that of Toro, that I have been forced to the conclusion that there are two distinct varieties; a theory in which the natives universally concur.