FUNGUSES.
During the rainy season the country is very prolific in many varieties of funguses. The Bongo have a great fancy for them; they keep them till they are on the verge of decay, and then dry and pound them. They use them for the purpose of flavouring their sauces, which in consequence are enriched by a haut goût, which without depreciation may perhaps be compared to rotten fish. Throughout the country I never saw any funguses but what were perfectly edible, and some of them I must confess were very palatable. The natives call them all “Kahoo,” while to the larger species they give the special name of “hegba-mboddoh,” which is synonymous with the Low German “poggen staul,” or with the English “toad-stool.” “Hegba” is the name which the Bongo give to their little carved stools, and “mboddoh” is the generic term for all frogs and toads, and the proper designation for the Bufo pandarinus in particular. This “hegba-mboddoh,” which has thus suggested the same idea in very remote parts of the world, is here a gigantic Polyporus; not unfrequently specimens may be found of it which grow to a height of nine inches, are a foot in diameter and weigh nearly fifty pounds. In form, size, and colour they are not unlike the grey clay edifices of the Termes mordax, of which I shall have occasion to speak hereafter. The funguses which are most common, and which moreover are the most preferred, are the different species of Coprinus, Marasmius, Rhodosporus, and the tough but aromatic Lentinus.
I have already mentioned the great abundance of edible, if not always palatable, fruit which is produced by the common trees of the country. In clearing the woods for their tillage the Bongo are always careful to leave as many of these trees as they can, and by thus sparing them they preserve many a noble ornament to their fields, which would otherwise be as monotonous as they are flat. The Butter-tree and the Parkia are very carefully in this way saved from destruction, and form a striking feature in many of their landscapes. It is a remarkable peculiarity of the flora of this region that all the species which are not essentially shrubby or arborescent strive for a perennial existence; and, as evidence of this, it may be observed that the roots and portions of the stem beneath the soil either develop into bulbs and tubers, or exhibit a determination to become woody. Annuals occupy a very insignificant place, and all vegetation seems to be provided with a means of withstanding the annual steppe-burning, and of preserving the germs of life until the next period of vitality recurs. When their corn provision is exhausted, or when there is a failure in the harvest, then do the Bongo find a welcome resource in these tubers; they subsist upon them for days in succession, and find in them the staple of their nourishment whenever they go upon their marches in the wilderness.
Quite incredible is it what the Bongo are able to digest. Most of the bulbs and tubers are so extremely bitter that it is not until they have been thoroughly steeped in boiling water or have had their pungent matter mollified by being roasted at a fire, that they can be eaten at all; they are gall to the taste. Amongst these bitter bulbs there are two which may claim a special notice; these are the Mandibo and the Moddobehee. The Mandibo is a species of Coccinea, which is nearly everywhere very abundant; the Moddobehee (dog’s gum) is one of the Eureiandræ; they are both Cucurbitaceæ, and both contain poisonous matter. Impregnated with the like bitterness are the rape-like roots of the Asclepiadeæ, the huge tubers of the Entada Wahlbergii, and of the Pachyrrhizus; so also are the various kinds of Vernoniæ and Flemingiæ, which are dug up from a foot below the surface of the soil.
The natives can make but little use of the plants which grow from any of these numerous tubers. The diminutive Drimia lifts its pretty red blossoms about a couple of inches above the rocky ground, and is a bulbous plant which becomes edible after a prolonged boiling.
Whenever a halt is made upon the marches across the wilderness, the bearers, as soon as they are liberated from their burdens, set very vigorously to work and grub up all sorts of roots from the nearest thickets. I can myself vouch for a fact, which might fairly be deemed incredible, that thirty Bongo who accompanied me on my return to Sabby, at a time when I had scarcely enough to keep me from starvation, subsisted for six consecutive days entirely on these roots, and although we were hurrying on by forced marches, they lost neither their strength nor their spirits. Their constitution was radically sound, and they seemed formed to defy the treatment of their inhospitable home.
Already it has been mentioned that there is an entire deficiency of common salt throughout the district of the Gazelle. The alkali that is everywhere its substitute is obtained by soaking the ashes of the burnt wood of the Grewia mollis, a shrub common throughout Bongoland, and which is notoriously useful in another way by the quantity of bast which it produces.
SMOKING AMONG THE BONGO.
Tobacco is indispensable to the Bongo, and is universally cultivated. The species known as Mashirr (Nicotiana rustica) is very pungent; its small thick leaves are pounded in a mortar, and are subsequently pressed and dried in moulds. From the cakes thus formed, the natives break off fragments as they require them, grind them into powder by means of stones, and smoke the preparation in long pipes that have very pretty clay bowls. They are addicted to smoking quite as inveterately as many of the nations that live in the polar regions, and are not content until they are utterly stupefied by its effects. I had a circumstance brought under my notice which exhibited to me the extreme to which they can carry their abuse of the narcotic: upon one of our marches a Bongo man had indulged to such excess, and had inhaled the pungent fume so long, that he fell senseless into a campfire, and was taken up so severely burnt that he had to be carried by his comrades on a litter for the remainder of the journey.
The Bongo fashion of smoking is even more disgusting than that which has been already described as prevalent amongst the Dinka. In the same manner as with them, the pipe is passed from hand to hand, but the lump of bast that intercepts the pungent oil is not placed in the receptacle of the stem, but is put in the mouth of the smoker, and together with the pipe is passed from one person to another. The habit of chewing tobacco is adopted as much by the Bongo as by the Mohammedan inhabitants of Nubia; but the custom is so universal that there would seem to be ample justification for the belief that it is indigenous rather than what has been acquired from foreigners. The practice in which the Bongo indulges of placing his tobacco quid behind his ear is very repulsive.