“He takes away my appetite by his disgusting bestiality of appearance. His light-yellow face shows off his ugly whiskers and faint apology for a beard; the forehead, villainously low, with high ears, is well in the background of the great dog-mouth; the teeth are slightly human, but the canines show the beast by their large development.
“The hands, or rather the fingers, are like those of the natives. The flesh of the feet is yellow, and the eagerness with which the Manyuema devour it leaves the impression that eating sokos was the first stage by which they arrived at being cannibals. They say the flesh is delicious. The soko is represented by some to be extremely knowing, successfully stalking men and women while at their work, kidnapping children and running up trees with them.
“He seems to be amused by the sight of the young native in his arms, but comes down when tempted by a bunch of bananas, and as he lifts that drops the child; the young soko in such a case would cling closely to the armpit of the elder. One man was cutting out honey from a tree, and naked, when a soko suddenly appeared and caught him, then let him go. A man was hunting, and missed in his attempt to stab a soko; it seized the spear and broke it, then grappled with the man, who called to his companions, ‘Soko has caught me!’ The soko bit off the ends of his fingers and escaped unharmed. Both men are now alive at Bambarré.
“The soko is so cunning, and has such sharp eyes that no one can stalk him in front, without being seen; hence, when shot, it is always in the back. When surrounded by men and nets, he is generally speared in the back too; otherwise, he is not a very formidable beast. He is nothing, as compared in power of damaging his assailant, to a leopard or lion, but is more like a man unarmed, for it does not occur to him to use his canine teeth, which are long and formidable.
“Numbers of them come down in the forest within a hundred yards of our camp, and would be unknown but for giving tongue like fox-hounds: this is their nearest approach to speech. A man hoeing was stalked by a soko and seized. He roared out, but the soko giggled and grinned, and left him as if he had done it in play. A child caught up by a soko is often abused by being pinched and scratched and let fall.
“The soko kills the leopard occasionally by seizing both paws and biting them so as to disable them; he then goes up a tree, groans over his wounds, and sometimes recovers, while the leopard dies. At other times both soko and leopard die. The lion kills him at once, and sometimes tears his limbs off, but does not eat him. The soko eats no flesh; small bananas are his dainties, but not maize. His food consists of wild fruits, which abound. One, staféné, or Manyuema mamwa, is like large, sweet sop, but indifferent in taste and flesh. The soko brings forth at times twins. A very large soko was seen by Mohamad’s hunters sitting picking his nails. They tried to stalk him, but he vanished.
“Some Manyuema think that their buried dead rise as sokos, and one was killed, with holes in his ears, as if he had been a man. He is very strong and fears guns, but not spears; he never catches women.
“Sokos collect together and make a drumming noise, some say with hollow trees, then burst forth into loud yells, which are well imitated by the natives’ embryotic music. When men hear them, they go to the sokos; but sokos never go to men with hostility. Manyuema say, ‘Soko is a man, and nothing bad in him.’
“If a man has no spear the soko goes away satisfied; but if wounded he seizes the wrist, lops off the fingers and spits them out, slaps the cheeks of his victim, and bites without breaking the skin. He draws out a spear (but never uses it), and takes some leaves and stuffs them into his wound to staunch the blood. He does not wish an encounter with an armed man. He sees women do him no harm, and never molests them; a man without a spear is nearly safe from him.
“They live in communities of about ten, each having his own female. An intruder from another camp is beaten off with their fists and loud yells. If one tries to seize the female of another he is caught on the ground, and all unite in boxing and biting the offender. A male often carries the child, especially if they are passing from one patch of forest to another over a grassy space; he then gives it to the mother.”