The Country of the Dwarfs

by Paul B. Du Chaillu

The Ishogos have really good large huts, many of which were adorned with roomy piazzas. The forest round the village of Mokenga was filled with leopards, so that the people could not sleep outside their huts in very warm weather, and every goat was carefully guarded in order not to become the prey of those beasts. In the centre of the village were two goat-houses, built so strongly that the leopards could not get in, and every evening the goats were shut up. The Ishogos not only have goats, but also a small species of poultry, and almost every house has a parrot of the gray variety with red tail. Bee-hives were also plentiful.

Not far from the goat-house were found two large trees that were planted when the village was built, and upon them were thousands of birds' nests, with myriads of birds, which made a fearful noise. These birds lived all the year round in Mokenga. I have given you a description of their colony in "Wild Life under the Equator."

One morning, before the people were up, I took the road leading to the spring from which the villagers got their water, for I wanted to see it. The path led down the hill, and soon a charming sight met my eye. The landscape was lovely. A rill of water, clear, cold, and pure, leaped from the lower part of a precipitous hill, and, with a fall of about nine feet, fell into a crystal basin filled with beautiful pebbles. From the basin a rivulet crawled along a bed of small pebbles down to the lower level, winding through a most beautiful forest. The scene was very beautiful.

One day, when I had seated myself below the fall, the rays of the sun, peeping through an opening, happened to shine upon the water, and made it look like running crystal. Below the cascade, the bed of the little stream, filled with pebbles of quartz, sparkled as if the pebbles had been diamonds; they might have been taken for gems while the sun was shining upon them. Water-lilies, white as snow, grew here and there, and moved to and fro, tossed by the water flowing toward the great river Rembo. The water looked like the water of life, and so it was. I said to myself, "When God is good to man, he is good to all; for all kinds of living creatures come to this stream, and drink of the water which is life to them."

The gentle ripple of the stream, as it glided down, sounded like music, and made me think. I could not help it. My thoughts wandered far over the mountains, and the lands I had crossed and discovered, and far beyond the sea, to the land where the great Mississippi flows. I looked intently at the water. Now and then I could see a little pebble rolling along; then it would stand still for a while, and again roll on, and every roll wore it away and rounded it. As it kept rolling down the stream day after day, year after year, it would become daily less and less in size. I said to myself, "What does keep still? Since the beginning of the world, nothing has stood still; every thing goes on and on, and will continue to do so till the end."

Just as I was beginning to think deeply on the subject, a leaf fell from a tree into the water, and was carried away down the stream. Now it would strand on the shore, or on some little island which seemed to have been made for a resting-place, and then it would be carried away again by the swift current. I wondered what would be the journey of that little leaf. Would it be carried all the way to the sea? Surely it could not tell, neither could I tell how long a time it would take to get to the sea, nor what would happen to it during the passage. Our life, I thought, is very much like the journey of that little leaf: it knew not what was before it, nor do we know what will happen to us.

Such is life. From the day we are born we know not how we shall be carried on by the stream of life. We may strand on the shore, or we may glide gently down the current; but, like this little leaf, on our journey we must meet with whirlpools and rocky shores, rapids and precipices, and many obstacles. Storms may overtake us and strand us, but the end of the journey is sure to come, and then the great and the learned, the rich and the poor, the Christian and the heathen, the Moslem and the Jew, are sure to meet.

I followed the little leaf till it disappeared from my sight forever. Another came and followed it, and another, and another, and they all vanished after a while, never to come back to the same spot. So it is with man, I thought. One disappears from sight—Death has taken him. Another comes and takes his place; another and another follow each other, as these leaves did, and all go to the same goal—Death.

I said to myself, "I have drifted away like one of these leaves; sometimes tossed by the sea, sometimes by the wind, going to and fro, carried down the journey of life, meeting storms and breakers. I can not tell where I shall drift, for no man can tell what the future has in store for him. God alone knows whither the little leaf and I are drifting."

As I continued my reverie, thinking of life and its mysteries, and of the future, a beautiful butterfly made its appearance. Its colors were brilliant—red and white, blue and gold. It went from lily to lily, caring apparently for nothing but the sweets of life. I could not help saying to myself, "How many are like this little butterfly! but how little we know, for I am sure this butterfly has its troubles, and so have those who have made the world and its pleasures the flowers upon which they live."