With their black poodle crops of hair, and the eccentric tufts and pigtails on their heads, they afforded a spectacle which to me was infinitely novel and surprising. Amongst the hundreds of Bongo and Mittoo, with whom the Dinka were associated as drovers, these creatures stood out like beings of another world; here were genuine, unmistakeable Niam-niam, neither circumcised nor crop-headed, such as other travellers have seen either in Khartoom or in the Seribas; here they were, presenting all the features of wildness which the most vivid Oriental imagination could conceive; a people of a marked and most distinct nationality, and that in Africa and amongst Africans is saying much.
Pursuing our route on the following day, we passed along a country that was very undulated, and led through many deeply cut defiles which ran down to the river. For three leagues we kept making a stiff ascent over fallow land, until we arrived at the settlement of Nganye. In consequence of the early rains and that which had fallen in the previous night, the ground had become quite soft, and a multitude of those plants which put forth their blossoms before their leaves had sprouted up. Grass so strong and so thick I have never elsewhere seen, as what I saw in this region. Subsequently I penetrated much farther on, and saw the high grass of the southern districts in the height of the rainy season, but on returning in the month of June, I could not suppress my astonishment at the enormous growth which here the grass attained. The dry stalks, in their height and thickness like reeds on a river-bank, are intentionally protected by the natives from destruction when the steppes are burned: and whenever there seems a chance of driving up a herd of elephants, the steppe-burning is only partial, and done in patches. The strongest of these permanent grasses is a species of panicum which the Niam-niam call “popukky.” The haulm of this attains a height of fifteen feet, and becomes almost as hard as wood, and as thick as a man’s finger. Cut crosswise its section is not circular, but a compressed oval, its colour being a bright golden yellow. At its lower end it is not hollow like a reed, but quite compact in substance, and if I wanted to make pipe-stems of it, I was obliged first of all to bore right through its length. Of this popukky the Niam-niam construct some very serviceable doors for their huts, and some mats, which they lay upon the ground and use for beds.
Whenever masses of grass of this nature are set on fire, the elephants have no possible escape from certain death. The destruction is carried on by wholesale. Thousands of huntsmen and drivers are gathered together from far and wide by means of signals sounded on the huge wooden drums. Everyone who is capable of bearing arms at all is converted into a huntsman, just as everyone becomes a soldier when the national need demands. No resource for escape is left to the poor brutes. Driven by the flames into masses, they huddle together young and old, they cover their bodies with grass, on which they pump water from their trunks as long as they can, but all in vain. They are ultimately either suffocated by the clouds of smoke, or overpowered by the heat, or are so miserably burnt that at last and ere long they succumb to the cruel fate that has been designed for them by ungrateful man. The coup de grâce may now and then be given them by the blow of some ready lance, but too often, as may be seen from the tusks that are bought, the miserable beasts must have perished in the agonies of a death by fire. A war of annihilation is this, in which neither young nor old, neither the female nor the male, is spared, and in its indiscriminate slaughter it compels us sorrowfully to ask and answer the question “Cui bono?” No other reply seems possible but what is given by the handles of our walking-sticks, our billiard balls, our pianoforte keys, our combs and our fans, and other unimportant articles of this kind. No wonder, therefore, if this noble creature, whose services might be so invaluable to man, should even, perhaps some time during our own generation, be permitted to rank in the category of the things that have been, and to be as extinct as the ure-ox, the sea-cow, or the dodo.
Niam-niam in full dress.
ARRIVAL AT A MBANGA.
Fatiguing enough we found our progress through the towering grass. The path was narrow, and it was very necessary to plant one’s foot firmly upon the stalks to avoid stumbling on the way. At length towards noon we arrived at the head-quarters of the chieftain, a residence which, in the language of the country, is called his “mbanga.”
I found myself at once encircled by the natives, who came streaming in to see for themselves the white man of whom already they had heard so much. It was my own first opportunity of seeing the Niam-niam in the reality of their natural life. As became a people with whom hunting is a prominent feature in their pursuits, they were girded with skins. High upon their extensively-dressed hair they wore straw-hats covered with feathers and cowries, and fastened on by means of long bodkins of iron or copper. Their chocolate-coloured skin was painted in stripes, like those of the tiger, with the juice of the Blippo (Gardenia malleifera).