With all this cleanliness in cooking, they are so fond of animal food that they will eat it when almost falling to pieces with decomposition. And, in spite of their love for it, there is scarcely any kind of meat which is not prohibited to one family or another, or at all events to some single individual. For example, when one of the party has shot a wild bull (Bos brachiceros), their principal chief or king refused to touch the flesh, saying that it was “roonda,” or prohibited to himself and his family, because, many generations back, a woman of his family had given birth to a calf. Another family was prohibited from eating the flesh of the crocodile, for similar reasons. So careful are the Bakalai on this subject that even their love for meat fails before their dread of the “roonda,” and a man will sooner die of starvation than eat the prohibited food. Of course, this state of things is singularly inconvenient. The kindred prohibitions of Judaism and Mahometanism are trying enough, especially to travellers, who cannot expect any great choice of food. But, as in the latter cases, the prohibited articles are invariably the same, there is little difficulty about the commissariat.
Among the Bakalai, however, if the traveller should happen to employ a party of twenty men, he may find that each man has some “roonda” which will not permit him to join his comrades at their repast. One man, for example, may not eat monkey’s flesh, while another is prohibited to eat pork, and a third is forbidden to touch the hippopotamus, or some other animal. So strict is the law of “roonda,” that a man will often refuse to eat anything that has been cooked in a kettle which may once have held the forbidden food.
This brings us naturally to other superstitions, in which the Bakalai seem to be either peculiarly rich, or to have betrayed more of their religious system than strangers can generally learn from savages. The usual amount of inconsistency is found in their religion, if we may dignify with such a name a mere string of incongruous superstitions. In the first place, there is nothing which they dread so much as death, which they believe to be the end of all life; and yet they have a nearly equal fear of ghosts and spirits, which they believe to haunt the woods after dark.
This fear of death is one of their principal inducements to shift their dwellings. If any one dies in a village, Death is thought to have taken possession of the place, and the inhabitants at once abandon it, and settle down in another spot. The prevalence of this idea is the cause of much cruelty toward the sick and infirm, who are remorselessly driven from the villages, lest they should die, and so bring death into the place.
M. du Chaillu gives a very forcible illustration of this practice. “I have twice seen old men thus driven out, nor could I persuade any one to give comfort and shelter to these friendless wretches. Once, an old man, poor and naked, lean as death himself, and barely able to walk, hobbled into a Bakalai village, where I was staying. Seeing me, the poor old fellow came to beg some tobacco—their most cherished solace. I asked him where he was going.
“‘I don’t know.’
“‘Where are you from?’
“He mentioned a village a few miles off.
“‘Have you no friends there?’
“‘None.’