On the 12th we moved up as usual, starting at 6.30 A.M., the caravan preceding the boat and its consorts. Though proceeding only at the rate of a mile and a half per hour, we soon overhauled the struggling caravan, and passed the foremost of the pioneers. At 10 A.M. we met a native boy, called Bakula, of about fifteen years, floating down river on a piece of a canoe. He sprung aboard our 1887.
July 12.
Bandangi. boat with alacrity, and used his paddle properly. An hour later we rounded the lowest point of a lengthy curve, bristling with numerous large villages. The boy volunteer who had dropped to our aid from the unknown, called the lower village Bandangi, the next Ndumba, and the long row of villages above, the houses of the Banalya tribe. But all were deserted. We halted at Bandangi for lunch, and at 2 P.M. resumed our journey.
An hour's pull brought us to the upper village, where we camped. Our river party on this day numbered forty men; but, as we landed, we were lost in the large and silent village. I had counted thirteen villages—one of these numbered 180 huts. Assuming that in this curve there were 1300 huts, and allowing only four persons to each hut, we have a population of 5200.
At 5.30 appeared the advance guard of the column, and presently a furious tempest visited us, with such violent accompaniments of thunder and lightning as might have been expected to be necessary to clear the atmosphere charged with the collected vapours of this humid region—through which the sun appeared daily as through a thick veil. Therefore the explosive force of the electric fluid was terrific. All about us, and at all points, it lightened and shattered with deafening explosions, and blinding forks of flame the thick, sluggish, vaporous clouds. Nothing less than excessive energy of concentrated electricity could have cleared the heavy atmosphere, and allowed the inhabitants of the land to see the colour of the sky, and to feel the cheering influence of the sun. For four hours we had to endure the dreadful bursts; while a steady stream of rain relieved the surcharged masses that had hung incumbent above us for days. While the river party and advance guard were housed in the upper village, the rear guard and No. 4 Company occupied Bandangi, at the town end of the crescent, and we heard them shooting minute guns to warn us of their presence; while we vainly, for economical reasons, replied with the tooting of long ivory horns.
Such a large population naturally owned exclusive 1887.
July 12.
Bandangi. fields of manioc, plantations of bananas, and plantains, sugar-cane, gardens of herbs, and Indian corn, and as the heavy rain had saturated the ground, a halt was ordered.
By nine o'clock the rear guard was known to have arrived by Nelson's voice crying out for "chop and coffee"—our chop consisted of cassava cakes, a plantain or so roasted, and a mess of garden greens, with tea or coffee. Flesh of goat or fowl was simply unprocurable. Neither bird nor beast of any kind was to be obtained. Hitherto only two crocodiles and but one hippo had been discovered, but no elephant, buffalo, or antelope or wild hog, though tracks were numerous. How could it be otherwise with the pioneers' shouts, cries, noise of cutting and crushing, and pounding of trees, the murmur of a large caravan? With the continuous gossip, storytelling, wrangling, laughing or wailing that were maintained during the march, it was simply impossible. Progress through the undergrowth was denied without a heavy knife, machette, or bill-hook to sever entangling creepers and while an animal may have been only a few feet off on the other side of a bush, vain was the attempt to obtain view of it through impervious masses of vegetation.
In our boat I employed the halt for examining the islands near Bandangi. We discovered lengthy heaps of oyster-shells on one island, one of which was sixty feet long, ten feet wide, and four feet high; we can imagine the feasts of the bivalves that the aborigines enjoyed during their picnics, and the length of time that had elapsed since the first bivalve had been eaten. On my return I noticed through a bank-slip in the centre of the curve a stratum of oyster-shell buried three feet under alluvium.
Our native boy Bakula, informed us that inland north lived the Baburu, who were very different from the river tribes, that up river, a month's journey, would be found dwarfs about two feet high, with long beards; that he had once journeyed as far as Panga where the river tumbled from a height as high as the tallest tree, that the Aruwimi was now called Lui by the people of 1887.
July 12.
Bandangi. the left bank, but that to the Baburu on the right bank it was known as the Luhali. Bakula was an exceptionally crafty lad, a pure cannibal, to whom a mess of human meat would have been delectable. He was a perfect mimic, and had by native cunning protected himself by conforming readily to what he divined would be pleasing to the strangers by whom he was surrounded. Had all the native tribes adopted this boy's policy our passage through these novel lands would have been as pleasant as could be desired. I have no doubt that they possessed all the arts of craft which we admired in Bakula, they had simply not the courage to do what an accident had enabled him to carry out.
From Chief Bambi's town of the Banalya we moved to Bungangeta villages by river and land on the 15th. It was a stern and sombre morning, gloomy with lowering and heavy clouds. It struck me on this dull dreary morning, while regarding the silent flowing waters of the dark river and the long unbroken forest frontage, that nature in this region seems to be waiting the long expected trumpet-call of civilization—that appointed time when she shall awake to her duties, as in other portions of the earth. I compared this waiting attitude to the stillness preceding the dawn, before the insect and animal life is astir to fret the air with its murmur, before the day has awakened the million minute passions of the wilds; at that hour when even Time seems to be drowsy and nodding, our inmost thoughts appear to be loud, and the heart throbs to be clamorous. But when the young day peeps forth white and gray in the East the eyelids of the world lift up. There is a movement and a hum of invisible life, and all the earth seems wakened from its brooding. But withal, the forest world remains restful, and Nature bides her day, and the river shows no life; unlike Rip Van Winkle, Nature, despite her immeasurably long ages of sleep, indicates no agedness, so old, incredibly old, she is still a virgin locked in innocent repose.
What expansive wastes of rich productive land lie in this region unheeded by man! Populous though the 1887.
July 15.
Bungangeta. river banks are, they are but slightly disturbed by labour—a trifling grubbing of parts of the foreshore, a limited acreage for manioc, within a crater-like area in the bosom of the dark woods, and a narrow line of small cotes, wherein the savages huddle within their narrow circumference.
One of my amusements in the boat was to sketch the unknown course of the river—for as the aborigines disappeared like rats into their holes on one's approach I could gain no information respecting it. How far was it permissible for me to deviate from my course? By the river I could assist the ailing and relieve the strong. The goods could be transported and the feeble conveyed. Reserves of manioc and plantain could also be carried. But would a somewhat long curve, winding as high as some forty or fifty geographical miles north of our course, be compensated by these advantages of relief of the porters, and the abundance of provisions that are assuredly found on the banks? When I noted the number of the sick, and saw the jaded condition of the people, I felt that if the river ascended as far as 2° N., it was infinitely preferable to plunging into the centre of the forest.