Again, all those concerned in the hunt had to chew red pepper and the pulp of the nsafu fruit, and if anyone refused to eat this mixture or could not spit it out properly it was taken as an adverse omen and the hunt abandoned. When the medicine man had secured the spirits in his saucepan or calabash, and the omen was satisfactory, the man who started the proceedings and two or three friends went and put up the spear-trap. From the time of setting the trap until an animal was killed in it and eaten, these men abstained from all intercourse with women, otherwise the luck would be bad and their trap unsuccessful. The same prohibition was enforced on hunters who made traps (motambu = noose-traps) for bush-pigs and burrowing animals.
The natives are not good trackers. I very often hunted with them, and after a short time I was able to track the game as quickly as they. They relied more on the animal running into a trap, or into a noose, than tracking them down and spearing them. They never went tracking for long distances like the North American Indians, but simply for a mile or two round their own towns. Undoubtedly the various chiefs owning the ground and demanding certain parts of the animals killed on their land restricted the tracking and hunting to small areas for setting traps only, and consequently their tracking instincts were not developed.
The medicine man of the mat takes the dog selected for hunting purposes and puts into its mouth and nose the juice pressed from a crushed shrub called mumpongo, and this makes the dog keen of scent and courageous in the hunt. When such a dog dies it is not eaten like other dogs, but is buried in a mat like a child, for it is a fetish dog, and hence it is supposed to have a kind of spirit which, if not properly treated, can bring bad luck on its former owner.
For hippopotami, elephants, and antelopes spring traps were placed across their tracks. These traps are made by putting two stout uprights about four feet apart, one on either side of the track; then a stout cross-piece is tied at about twelve feet from the ground. To the middle of this cross-piece and right over the track is fixed a heavy log of wood; and into the downward end of the log is placed a strong, sharp, heavy spear or prong. The log is so arranged that when the string which stretches across the path is touched by the passing animal, down comes the log, and four times out of six the spear enters the body of the beast. I once saw the body of a man who, while running in the forest, had inadvertently touched the spring of one of these traps. The spear caught him in the back of the neck, passed through his body, and came out between his legs. Such traps were called mbonga. Occasionally pit-traps are made, but it is seldom that anything is found in them.
In hunting the larger bush animals, and also crocodiles, the spear is the most common weapon, and this is hurled with great precision and swiftness. But in hunting smaller game, as the small antelopes, coypus, or palm-rats, bush-pigs, and gazelle-like animals, long string nets are employed. These nets are placed in a semicircle near where the animal is supposed to be, and then the hunters carefully beat the bush, driving the game before them into the net. Most of the hunting-spears are light, with a small blade and thin shaft, and some have barbs along either side of the blade.
CHAPTER XVII
FISHING
Collecting fish for the Museum—Modes of fishing—By torchlight—Fish-fences—Traps and spoon-nets—Floating buoys and hooks—Fish-spears—Fish poisons—Prohibition with fish traps—Addressing the fisherman—Penalties—First-fruits—Portion given to head chief.
Fish is very plentiful in the Congo and its tributaries. The writer was asked a few years ago by the authorities of the Natural History Museum, London, if he would undertake to collect Congo fish for them. This he readily consented to do, and was glad of the opportunity of rendering them any assistance in his power on the understanding that it should be no expense, for transport, etc., to his Society. The Museum authorities sent him the necessary preserving spirits and the tanks. The latter he filled with fish, labelled them and forwarded them to M. G. A. Boulenger, who has charge of the Ichthyological Department at the Natural History Museum. The natives themselves became interested in collecting fish, and brought me their catches to see if there was a fish among them that I had not put into the “box”; and when later the Museum authorities sent me about fifty plates, beautifully engraved, of the Congo fish that I and others had sent to them, nothing delighted the native lads more than looking over those plates and talking about the fish represented by them.
I started collecting in the following simple way: In 1893 we had no fish-hooks on the station, but the boys asked my wife to give them some pins with which to make hooks. This we did, on the condition that the young fishermen brought their catches to us and allowed us to take one or two fish for my bottle. The fish they caught by such primitive means were, of course, rather small, about the size of one’s fingers; but I soon had two pickle bottles full of various kinds of fish. These bottles I brought home in 1895 and gave to the Natural History Museum, and several new species were found in that small, unpretentious collection. This led the Museum authorities to ask me to collect larger fish, which I gladly did.