“They came singing in procession from the forest. Their dance was uncouth; their song a solemn tuneless chant; they revolved in a circle, clasping their hands as we do in prayer, with their eyes fixed always on the moon, and sometimes their arms hung wildly toward her. The youth who played the drum assumed a glorious attitude. As I looked upon him—his head thrown back, his eyes upturned, his fantastic headdress, his naked, finely moulded form—I saw beauty in the savage for the first time.
“The measure changed, and two women, covered with green leaves and the skins of wild beasts, danced in the midst, where they executed a pas-de-deux which would have made a première danseuse despair. They accompanied their intricate steps with miraculous contortions of the body, and obtained small presents of white beads from the spectators.
“It has always appeared to me a special ordinance of Nature that women, who are so easily fatigued by the ascent of a flight of stairs, or by a walk to church, should be able to dance for any length of time; but never did I see female endurance equal this. Never did I spend a worse night’s rest. All night long those dreary deafening sounds drove sleep away, and the next morning these two infatuated women were still to be seen within a small but select circle of constant admirers, writhing in their sinuous (and now somewhat odorous) forms with unabated ardor.”
The form of marimba or handja which is used among the Fans has mostly seven notes, and the gourds have each a hole in them covered with a piece of spider’s web, as has already been narrated of the Central African drums. The Fan handja is fastened to a slight frame; and when the performer intends to play the instrument, he sits down, places the frame on his knees, so that the handja is suspended between them, and then beats on the keys with two short sticks. One of these sticks is made of hard wood, but the end of the other is covered with some soft material so as to deaden the sound. The Fans have really some ear for music, and possess some pretty though rudely constructed airs.
Of course the Fans have drums. The favorite form seems rather awkward to Europeans. It consists of a wooden and slightly conical cylinder, some four feet in length and only ten inches in diameter at the wider end, the other measuring barely seven inches. A skin is stretched tightly over the large end, and when the performer plays on it, he stands with bent knees, holding the drum between them, and beats furiously on the head with two wooden sticks.
To return to the Fan belief in charms.
It has already been mentioned that the Fans mostly hunt the elephant by driving it against a barrier artificially formed of vines, and killing it as it struggles to escape from the tangled and twisted creepers. They have also another and most ingenious plan, which, however, scarcely seems to be their own invention, but to be partly borrowed from the tribes through which they have passed in their progress westward. This plan is called the Nghal, that being the name of the enclosure into which the animals are enticed. While Mr. Reade was in the country of the Mpongwé tribe, into which, it will be remembered, the Fans had forced their way, the hunters found out that three elephants frequented a certain portion of the forest. Honorably paying the Mpongwé for permission to hunt in their grounds, they set out and built round an open patch of ground an enclosure, slightly made, composed of posts and railings. Round the nghal were the huts of the Fan hunters. When Mr. Reade arrived there, he was told that the three elephants were within the nghal, sleeping under a tree; and sure enough there they were, one of them being a fine old male with a large pair of tusks. If he had chosen he could have walked through the fence without taking the trouble to alter his pace, but here he was, together with his companions, without the slightest idea of escaping. So certain were the hunters that their mighty prey was safe, that they did not even take the trouble to close the openings through which the animals had entered the nghal. They were in no hurry to kill the elephants. They liked to look at them as they moved about in the nghal, apparently unconscious of the continual hubbub around them, and certainly undisturbed by it. The elephants were to remain there until the new moon, which would rise in a fortnight, and then they would be killed in its honor.
On inquiring, it was found that the enclosure was not built round the elephants, as might have been supposed. No. It was built at some distance from the spot where the elephants were feeding. “The medicine men made fetish for them to come in. They came in. The medicine men made fetish for them to remain. And they remained. When they were being killed, fetish would be made that they might not be angry. In a fortnight’s time the new moon would appear, and the elephants would then be killed. Before that time all the shrubs and light grass would be cut down, the fence would be strengthened, and interlaced with boughs. The elephants would be killed with spears, crossbows, and guns.”
The natives, however, would not allow their white visitor to enter the nghal, as he wished to do, and refused all his bribes of beads and other articles precious to the soul of the Fan. They feared lest the presence of a white man might break the fetish, and the sight of a white face might fright the elephants so much as to make them disregard all the charms that had been laid upon them, and rush in their terror against the fragile barrier which held them prisoners.
As to the method by which the elephants were induced to enter the enclosure, no other answer was made than that which had already been given. In India the enclosure is a vast and complicated trap, with an opening a mile or so in width, into which the elephants are driven gradually, and which is closed behind them as they advance into smaller and smaller prisons. In Africa all that was done was to build an enclosure, to leave an opening just large enough to admit an elephant, to make fetish for the elephants, and in they came.