The Country of the Dwarfs

by Paul B. Du Chaillu

Mayolo deferred his answer till the next day. I suppose he wanted to prepare himself for a great speech. The following morning he came before my hut, surrounded by his people. Mayolo began:

"When a hunter goes into the forest in search of game, he is not glad until he returns home with meat; so Chally's heart will not be glad until he finishes what he wishes to do." Then he continued to speak for more than an hour, and ended by saying, "Chally, we shall soon be on the long road, and go toward where the sun rises."

As soon as the recovery of Mayolo seemed certain, the people prepared to celebrate the event. Jar after jar of native beer came in, and in the evening the people of the village had a grand time. Mayolo was the most uproarious of all, dancing, slapping his chest, and shouting, "Here I am, alive! The Otando people said I should die because the Spirit had come, but here I am! Here I am, Chally, well at last! I tell you I am well, Oguizi!" and, to show me that he was well, he began to leap about, and to strike the ground with his feet, saying, "Don't you see I am well? The Otando people said, the Apono said, as soon as they heard you had arrived in my village, 'Mayolo is a dead man!' As soon as I fell ill, they said, 'Mayolo will never get up again! Has not the Oguizi killed Remandji and Olenda?' But here I am, alive and well! Fire guns, that the people of the villages around may know that Mayolo is well!" As he went, he shouted, "I knew that the Oguizi did not like to see me ill. I am Mayolo! I will take him farther on!"

I never knew how good Mayolo was till I saw him in better health. He had a good, kind heart, though he was a savage, and we had nice talks together. He asked me all sorts of questions. When I told him that in my country we had more cattle than he, but that they remained on our plantations, just as his goats did, he seemed incredulous. Then I told him that as I went inland I would meet tribes of blacks who kept tame cattle. He said he had never heard of such people; he could not believe what I said. But when I told him that there were countries where elephants were tamed, and that the people rode on their backs, the astonishment of Mayolo and of his people became great. Then I showed him an illustrated paper. "Oh! oh! oh!" they shouted. In the evening Mayolo presented me with a splendid fat monkey.

I should tell you that all this time I had really splendid food. The monkeys were delicious, and so plentiful in the woods near Mayolo's village that we could have them wherever we pleased. It was in the season when they were fat. The nchègai, the nkago, the miengai, and the ndova were also abundant, and we enjoyed eating them, for those creatures seemed, in the months of April and May, to be nothing but balls of fat. It was the time of the year, too, when the forest trees bore most fruit, berries, and nuts. The miengai and the ndova were the species of animals which I preferred for food. I defy any one to find nicer venison in any part of the world. A haunch grilled on a bright charcoal fire was simply delicious. "Horrible!" you will say; "the idea of eating monkeys! It is perfectly dreadful!" and at the same time I am sure you will make a face so ugly that it would frighten you if you were to look at yourself in the glass. You may say, "Oh, a roast monkey must look so much like a roasted little baby! Fy!" Never mind. I can only say that if you ever go into the forests of Equatorial Africa, and taste of a monkey in the season when those animals are fat, you will exclaim with me, "What delicious and delicate food! how exquisite!" As I am writing these lines, the recollection of those meals makes me hungry. I wish I had a monkey here, ready for cooking. I would invite you to partake of it; and I think you could eat the monkey without being accused of cannibalism.

The first time after my arrival at Mayolo's village that I took my photographic tent out of its japanned tin box, I called him to look at it after I had fixed it ready for use, but it was not easy to get him to come. He had a suspicion that there was witchcraft in it. Finally I succeeded in getting him to look at the apparatus. I made him look at the prairie through the yellow window-glass by which the light came into the little tent while I was working with the chemicals or the plates. As he looked, the trees, the grass, the sunlight, the ant-hills, the people, the fowls, the goats, all appeared yellow to him. The good old fellow was frightened out of his wits. He thought I was practicing witchcraft. I believe if he had gone into the tent he would have died of fright. He stepped back, looked at me with fear and amazement, and went away, raising his hands, and with his mouth wide open. After a while he said that I had turned the world to another color. The next day all the people came to see the wonderful thing.

I had so little to do that I gave my whole heart to the contemplation of the heavens. Many hours of the night were spent by me looking at the stars. When every one had gone to sleep, I stood all alone on the prairie, with a gun by my side, watching. There was no place upon our earth where one could get a grander view of the heavens than that I now occupied, for I stood almost under the equator, and the months of April and May in Mayolo were the months when the atmosphere is the purest; for after the storms the azure of the sky was so intensely deep that it made the stars doubly bright in the blue vault of heaven.

At that period the finest constellations of the southern hemisphere were within view at the same time—the constellations of the Ship, the Cross, the Centaur, the Scorpion, and the Belt of Orion, and also the three brightest stars in the heavens, Sirius, Canopus, and α Centauri.

How fond I was of looking at the stars! I loved many of them; they were my great friends, for they were my guides in their apparently ascending and descending course. How glad I was when one of these lovely friends again made its appearance after a few months' absence! how anxiously I watched toward the east for its return! and at last, as it rose from the dim horizon, and became brighter and brighter in ascending the heavens, how it delighted my heart! Do not wonder at it when I say I love the stars, for without them I would not have known where to direct my steps. I watched them as a tottering child watches his mother.