Through Veld and Forest: An African Story

by Harry Collingwood

The funeral pyre was erected in the centre of a spacious basin among the hills at the head of the valley, some six miles from the palace, and early in the afternoon the inhabitants began to gather in front of the palace, to witness and take part in the spectacle. Then, about four o’clock, the royal bodyguard, with their regimental banners twisted into a knot and bound to the staves with broad white ribbons in token of mourning, paraded before the palace, and the trumpeters sounded seven blasts; whereupon the funeral cortege made its appearance, issuing from the main entrance to the palace. First stalked the royal standard-bearer, carrying the royal standard, knotted and bound to its staff with white ribbon; then came the royal bier, which consisted of a platform borne by twelve men attired wholly in white—the mourning colour—and draped with white silk, heavily fringed with gold bullion, which swept the ground. Upon this platform was placed the royal throne of ivory heavily mounted in gold; and upon the throne, and securely fastened to it, was seated the body of Bimbane, fully attired in her robes of state, and crowned with a gold coronet set with uncut diamonds and ornamented with the crimson wings of the orilu, which only a monarch might wear. Then came Anuti, alone, in his full uniform, closely followed by the nobles and chiefs of the nation—among whom the new king had insisted that I should take my place. Slowly and with solemn step we descended the broad flight of stone steps until we reached the spacious quadrangle at their foot, and here our attendants led forward our steeds and we mounted, Prince, with his glossy black coat, being conspicuous among the array of zebras which constituted the mounts of the rest.

As the bier reached the quadrangle, a trumpet blast rang out, and the royal bodyguard arranged itself into three sides of a hollow square, into which the bier passed, when, with the royal standard-bearer riding in front, the banners of the guard immediately following him, and the trumpeters between them and the mounted troops blowing long, wailing blasts at regular intervals, the cortege proceeded slowly and solemnly along the road, the bier, surrounded by the bodyguard, being followed by Anuti and the rest of us, while the inhabitants in general brought up the rear.

In this fashion the funeral cortege passed along the main road through the city to the scene of the cremation, the march occupying just two hours. We reached the funeral pyre as the last rays of the sun were gilding the tops of the trees which hemmed in the valley, when the bodyguard formed a hollow square round the pyre, with Anuti and the nobles inside it, while the inhabitants ranged themselves upon the adjacent hillside to witness, for the first time in their lives, the spectacle of a royal cremation. About a hundred priests, arrayed in long white robes, were gathered about the pyre when we reached it; and as soon as the bier, with its dead occupant, had been deposited upon the summit of the pyre, the arch-priest began the funeral service, which lasted about a quarter of an hour. By the time that this was over it was quite dark, the surrounding tree tops standing out black against the star-studded sky; and only an occasional faint, evanescent gleam here and there of starlight upon golden armour told of the presence of all that multitude.

Then, the religious service being at an end, a lighted torch was mysteriously produced from somewhere and handed to Anuti, who, approaching the pyre, thrust the burning brand into the heart of it and retired again to his former place. For a second or two the darkness continued; then here and there about the pyre small wreaths of smoke floated out, quickly followed by little tongues of flame, rapidly increasing in intensity until within a few minutes the whole of the upper part of the pyre was ablaze, and the basin, with its crowds of splendidly attired and mounted officials, was brilliantly illuminated by the ruddy glare. I think the bier, and possibly the body also, must have been treated with some highly combustible preparation, for I noticed that the moment the flames reached them they seized upon them with avidity, so that within ten minutes of the first kindling the bier and the body were both enwrapped in a roaring volume of vivid flame, in which the corpse seemed to shrink and shrivel so rapidly that when at length the top of the pyre collapsed and fell in, scarcely a vestige of bier or body was to be seen. The fire blazed so furiously—throwing out an almost unendurable heat—that within half an hour the pyre had become reduced to a heap of ruddy, dull-glowing ashes; whereupon Anuti gave a signal, the trumpeters blew seven blasts by way of final salute to the dead, the white ribbons were torn from the banners and cast upon the flickering flames, the banners were unknotted, and, forming up in military array, the mounted contingent wheeled and departed, making their way back to the palace, and leaving the pedestrians to return home at their leisure.

On the following day a golden urn, containing ashes asserted to be those of the dead queen, was deposited by the priests in the funeral chamber beneath the palace, and Bimbane, with all her faults and crimes, finally disappeared for ever from among the Bandokolo.

The accession of Anuti to the throne was the cause of general rejoicing throughout the country; and in accordance with custom the new king proclaimed a grand festival in celebration of the event. But as the festival—also in accordance with custom—necessarily consisted to a great extent of fights between condemned criminals and wild animals, especially man-monkeys, I declined to remain and be present; and Anuti, knowing my views with regard to such barbarous spectacles, did not press the point. On the contrary, he fully sympathised with me, and would very gladly have abolished the custom, but public opinion was too strong even for him; the sports were so highly appreciated that to have suppressed them would have very seriously impaired his popularity, and this he dared not risk just then, at the very beginning of his reign. Therefore he did everything he could to expedite my departure, presenting me with a beautiful team of twenty-four thoroughly broken zebras to take the place of my slain oxen, lending me a driver to instruct mine in the handling of them; also he insisted upon my retaining every one of the gifts bestowed upon me by the late queen, and added to them a second goatskin sackful of magnificent diamonds; and finally he instructed my old friend Pousa to escort me with his squadron to the frontier, more as a guard of honour than by way of protection, for by that time my fame had spread to the uttermost parts of the kingdom, and no Bandokolo would have dreamed of attempting to molest me. And, thus magnificently rewarded for services that, after all, I at least regarded as utterly insignificant, I took my departure from Masakisale on my homeward journey, exactly a week after the celebration of the funeral obsequies of Queen Bimbane, much to the regret, I was assured, of all whose acquaintance I had made.

My departure from Masakisale was a very different affair from that of my entrance into it. For, although I was not permitted to suspect it at the time, there can be no doubt that I entered the capital of Bandokolo virtually as a prisoner, and was an object of curiosity and suspicion to everybody who set eyes upon me; while now I went forth accompanied by expressions of regard and regret from the entire inhabitants of the city, who seemed to have turned out en masse to witness my departure and to bid me farewell. Also, excluding what remained of my ammunition and provisions, my wagon was loaded to its utmost capacity with gold and precious stones; and it no longer crawled over the ground at a bare three miles an hour, but proceeded at quite double that speed behind the sturdy, sprightly, high-spirited team of twenty-four zebras, which would have travelled half as fast again had I not determined to work them very lightly, in view of the long, toilsome journey that lay before me.

And here, for the gratification of the curious, I may as well describe the manner in which these animals were attached to the wagon. I suppose everybody by this time knows, either from pictures or from having seen the thing itself, what a South African wagon is like; and also knows that it is drawn by a team of from twelve to eighteen oxen yoked together in pairs, the cleverest pair being yoked next the wagon to the disselboom—which answers to the ordinary carriage pole where a pair of horses are driven abreast—while the remainder of the team are yoked, also in pairs, to the trek chain, which is attached to the extremity of the disselboom. Now, oxen pull upon a yoke which rests upon their necks and is attached thereto by a strip of rein passing under their throats, and this constitutes the whole of their very primitive harness. But it was obvious that such an arrangement would be quite unsuited to my new team of zebras: consequently harness had to be especially made for them, consisting of a breast and shoulder strap, the former being made long enough to form a pair of traces attachable to a splinter bar; there was also added a headstall with a single rein, which was fastened to the trek chain. This arrangement served for all but the leading pair of zebras, the off animal of which was fitted with a saddle upon which the driver sat postilion fashion, guiding the leaders and regulating the pace of the whole team.

During the first two days a Bandokolo drove the team, while ’Ngulubi, my Bantu voorlouper, rode beside him on one of my horses, watching the process and receiving instruction; but after that ’Ngulubi himself undertook the driving, while the Bandokolo rode alongside and continued his instruction. Thus, by the time that we reached the frontier, ’Ngulubi was quite qualified to act as driver, while he, Jan, and Piet had also learned to look after the zebras when they were outspanned.

With such a spanking team to draw the wagon, we took only eight and a half days to cover the distance between Masakisale and the frontier, instead of seventeen days, as on the outward journey; and here Pousa and his squadron regretfully bade me farewell, the captain’s regrets at parting from me being mitigated to a great extent by the gift of a shaving mirror and a burning-glass, the latter being esteemed by him at about the value that I attached to my two sacks of diamonds.