“It is very simple. Bateta coaxed a dog to live with him because he found that the dog preferred to sit on his haunches and wait for the bones that his family threw aside after the meal was over, rather than hunt for himself like other flesh-eating beasts. One day Bateta walked out into the woods, and his dog followed him. After a long walk Bateta rested at the foot of the straight tall tree called the palm, and there were a great many nuts lying on the ground, which perhaps the monkeys or the wind had thrown down. The dog after smelling them lay down and began to eat them, and though Bateta was afraid he would hurt himself, he allowed him to have his own way, and he did not see that they harmed him at all, but that he seemed as fond as ever of them. By thinking of this he conceived that they would be no harm to him; and after cooking them, he found that their fat improved the flavour of his vegetables, hence the custom came down to us. Indeed, the knowledge of most things that we know to-day as edibles came down to us through the observation of animals by our earliest fathers. What those of old knew not was found out later through stress of hunger, while men were lost in the bushy wilds.”
When at last we rose to retire to our tents and huts, the greater number of our party felt the sorrowful conviction that the Toad had imparted to all mankind an incurable taint, and that we poor wayfarers, in particular, were cursed with an excess of it, in consequence of which both Toad and tadpole were heartily abused by all.
Chapter Two.
The Goat, The Lion, and The Serpent.
Baruti, which translated means “gunpowder,” envied Matageza the “piece” of a dozen gay handkerchiefs, with which he had been rewarded for his excellent story, and one evening while he served dinner, ventured to tell me that he also remembered a story that had been told to him when a child among the Basoko.
“Very well, Baruti,” I replied, “we will all meet to-night around the camp fire as usual, and according to the merits of your story you will surely be rewarded. If it is better than Matageza’s, you shall have a still finer piece of cloth; if it is not so interesting, you cannot expect so much.”
“All right, sir. Business is business, and nothing for him that can say nothing.”
Soon after the darkness had fallen the captains of the expedition and the more intelligent men began to form the evening circle, and after we had discussed the state of the night, and the events of the day, I called out to Baruti for his story, when, after telling us what a great time had elapsed since he had heard it, and how by searching into the recesses of his memory he had at last remembered it, he delivered the story of “The Goat, the Lion, and the Serpent,” in the following manner:—