Very few are the people of Central Africa amongst whom the partiality for finery and ornaments is so strongly shown as with the Bongo. The women wear on their necks an accumulation of cords and beads, and not being fastidious like their neighbours, will put on without regard to shape or colour, whatever the market of Khartoom can provide. The men do not care much for this particular decoration, but prefer necklaces, on which they string some of those remarkable little fragments of wood which are so constantly found in every region of Africa. With the bits of wood hang fragments of roots, which are in form something like the mandrake, which, in Southern Europe, has been the subject of so strange a superstition. Alternating with the roots and wood are the talons of owls and eagles, the teeth of dogs, crocodiles, and jackals, little tortoise-shells, the claws of the earth-pig (Orycteropus), and in short any of those objects which we are accustomed to store in the cabinets which adorn our salons. They appear to supply the place of the extracts from the Koran which, wrapped in leather sheathes, the Nubians wear by dozens about their person; anything in the shape of an amulet being eagerly craved by every African.
BONGO DECORATION.
Not unfrequently the men deck themselves out in females’ ornaments. Many cover the rims of their ears with copper rings and crescents; others pierce the upper lip like the women, and insert either a round-headed copper nail or a copper plate, or, what is still more general, some rings or a bit of straw. The skin of the stomach above the waist is often pierced by the men, and the incision filled up with a bit of wood, or occasionally by a good-sized peg. On the wrist and upper part of the arm they wear iron rings of every pattern; some rings are cut out of elephant and buffalo hide, and look almost as though they were made of horn. The “dangabor,” an ornament composed of a series of iron rings, and worn on the lower portion of the arm, has been already described.
The Bongo women delight in distinguishing themselves by an adornment which to our notions is nothing less than a hideous mutilation. As soon as a woman is married the operation commences of extending her lower lip. This, at first only slightly bored, is widened by inserting into the orifice plugs of wood gradually increasing in size, until at length the entire feature is enlarged to five or six times its original proportions. The plugs are cylindrical in form, not less than an inch thick, and are exactly like the pegs of bone or wood worn by the women of Musgoo. By this means the lower lip is extended horizontally till it projects far beyond the upper, which is also bored and fitted with a copper plate or nail, and now and then by a little ring, and sometimes by a bit of straw about as thick as a lucifer-match. Nor do they leave the nose intact: similar bits of straw are inserted into the edges of the nostrils, and I have seen as many as three of these on either side. A very favourite ornament for the cartilage between the nostrils is a copper ring, just like those that are placed in the noses of buffaloes and other beasts of burden for the purpose of rendering them more tractable. The greatest coquettes among the ladies wear a clasp or cramp at the corners of the mouth, as though they wanted to contract the orifice, and literally to put a curb upon its capabilities. These subsidiary ornaments are not however found at all universally among the women, and it is rare to see them all at once upon a single individual: the plug in the lower lip of the married women is alone a sine quâ non, serving as it does for an artificial distinction of race. According to the custom of the people, there need only be a trifling projection of the skin so as to form a flap or a fold, to be at once the excuse for boring a hole. The ears are perforated more than any part, both the outer and the inner auricle being profusely pierced; the tip of the ear alone is frequently made to carry half-a-dozen little iron rings. There are women in the country whose bodies are pierced in some way or other in little short of a hundred different places.
The Bongo women limit their tattooing to the upper part of the arm. Zigzag or parallel lines, or rows of dots, often brought into relief by the production of proud flesh after the operation has been accomplished, are the three forms which in different combinations serve as marks of individual distinction. The men tattoo themselves differently, and some of them abstain from the operation altogether. At one time the lines run across the breast and stomach to one side of the body; at another they are limited to the top of the arm, whilst it is not at all unusual for the neck and shoulder-blades to be tattooed.
Besides the ornaments that I have mentioned, the toilet of a Bongo lady is incomplete without the masses of iron and copper rings which she is accustomed to wear on her wrists and arms, and more especially on her ankles. These rings clank like fetters as she walks, and even from a distance the two sexes can be distinguished by the character of the sound that accompanies their movements. That human patience should ever for the sake of fashion submit to a still greater martyrdom seems almost incredible, though hereafter we shall have sufficient proof when we delineate the habits of the Mittoo, the neighbours of the Bongo, that such is really the case.
In Bongoland, as in all the northern parts of the territory that I visited, copper of late years has attained a monetary value, and has become an accustomed medium of exchange. Glass beads are annually deteriorating in estimation, and have long ceased to be treasured up and buried in the earth like jewels or precious stones, being now used only to gratify female vanity. In former times, when the only intercourse that the Bongo held with the Mohammedan world was by occasional dealings with the Baggara Arabs, through the intervention of the Dembo, a Shillook tribe connected with the Dyoor, cowrie-shells were in great request, but these also have long since fallen out of the category of objects of value. Gold and silver are very rarely used as ornaments, even in the Mohammedan parts of the Eastern Soudan; it is therefore hardly a matter of surprise that to the Bongo, whose soil is singularly uniform in its geological productions, they should be all but unknown. The Bongo, moreover, have but little value for brass, differing greatly in this respect from their neighbours, the Dyoor.
BONGO WEAPONS.
Their weapons consist mainly of lances, bows and arrows, shields being very rarely used, and even then being appropriated from other neighbouring nations. Although the greater part of the population is at present quite unaccustomed to any warlike occupation, except when any of them chance to be employed in the raids upon the Dinka or in the Niam-niam campaigns, yet they still maintain a wonderful dexterity in the use of the bow and arrow, and we shall have occasion in another place to notice their performances in this respect. The large size of their weapons is remarkable; I saw many of their bows which were four feet in length, their arrows are rarely under three feet long, and on this account they are never made from the light reed-grass, but are cut out of solid wood. The forms of the arrow-heads also have a decided nationality stamped upon them. In the course of time I was easily able to determine at a glance the tribe to which any weapon belonged by certain characteristics, the details of which would now engross more time and space than are at our command. It may be mentioned that the Bongo, like the negroes above Fesoglu, on the Upper Blue Nile, imbue their arrows with the milky juice of one of the Euphorbiæ. This species, of which I now for the first time collected some specimens, has been erroneously represented by Tremaux in the atlas of his travels[35] as Euphorbia mamillaris, but it is in fact one of the many Cactus-euphorbiæ for which the flora of Tropical Africa, and especially that of the drier regions, is distinguished, and is entirely distinct from the South African species. It is a branching, straggling shrub, varying in height from five to eight feet, at one time growing in large masses in the light woods, and then failing altogether for the space of several days’ journey. Not only the larger branches, nearly two inches thick, but also the smaller boughs, are encrusted with a snowy white rind, covered with thick spiny protuberances, which stand singly under the eyes of the leaves. At the extremity of each bough is a bunch of fleshy succulent leaves, shaped like lances, and six inches in length. This species of Cactus-euphorbia (E. venefica) is termed by the Bongo “bolloh,” in contradistinction to “kakoh,” their name for the larger sort (E. candelabrum), which is common in the country, but of which the milky juice is far less dangerous than that of the “bolloh,” for if this be applied in a fresh condition to the skin, it results in a violent inflammation. It is, however, my opinion that this juice, as it is used by the Bongo, being spread in a hard mass over the barbs and heads of the arrows, can do very little harm to the wounded, as when it is once hard it is difficult to melt, and there cannot possibly be time for it to commingle with the blood after a wound has been made by an arrow.
BONGO GAMES.