HUNTING ELEPHANTS.
Their large ears contrasted singularly with the small ears of their Asiatic brethren; they were also somewhat smaller. Several of them had huge tusks of ivory; those of the bull were gigantic. They were bathing, and evidently enjoying themselves.
We now followed with great care the banks of the river about ten or fifteen yards inside of them, until at last the water became so deep that we came to a halt. How sorry we felt! I would have given much if I could have come near the elephants; but as we approached the banks we saw the elephants leaving the river. What monsters they seemed! I shouldered my long-range rifle, aimed at the big male, with but little hope of killing it, as I must have been several hundred yards off. I fired, heard the bullet strike one of the tusks, when the animals plunged into the forest, breaking down every thing before them.
CHAPTER XVIII.
NJALI-COUDIÉ.—AN AFRICAN TOWN.—THE CHIEF.—COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE IN AFRICA.—BUYING A WIFE.—QUARREL OVER THE SPOILS.
Now, after many wanderings, I find myself in the very large village of Bakalai called Njali-Coudié. Often I wonder that I have not been murdered by these Bakalai, for they are very treacherous, and life seems to them to be of no value.
The village of Njali-Coudié is situated in the very hilly country between the Ofoubou and Ovenga Rivers. It was one of the largest Bakalai villages I had ever seen. The people were wild; their houses were small, very small indeed, and built with the bark of trees. It was surrounded by large plantain groves and clusters of sugar-cane.
The name of the chief of that strange village was Mbango, and a fine savage he was. His hair and his beard were white. Round his waist was a piece of grass-cloth; by his side hung a tremendous war-knife; and on each of his ankles he wore two tremendous iron rings. Round his neck he wore some monda fetich, which he thought could protect him from evil spirits and from being bewitched. Round him hung some charmed powder, preserved in the skin of a wild animal. Around his chest he wore a strip of leopard’s skin, which his people believed could never be pierced by spears or arrows. So we might say that King Mbango thought himself invulnerable.
The people of the village were a hard set of quarrelsome-looking fellows. The women were not beautiful, indeed they were very ugly; and even King Mbango’s head-wife was far from being a belle. She was a tall woman; her teeth were filed to a point; her hair was anointed profusely with palm-oil; her face was all tattooed; and on each side of her cheek, a little below the eye, there were two round spots of flesh of the size of a quarter of a dollar. They had succeeded in raising the flesh, and it must have required a good deal of skill. On her chest any amount of fantastical tattooing could be seen; even her back was not free from this ornamentation. Such is the faithful picture of Mbango’s head-wife, whose name I have forgotten. She wore several brass anklets, and also several bracelets. King Mbango had a score of wives besides her, but she was the first woman he had married; hence she was the Queen—the foremost of them all. When Mbango married a new wife, she gave her advice and told her how she must love Mbango, how she must obey him, how laboriously she must cultivate the soil in order to bring food to her husband, and how she must often fish in order to feed her lord well. If she does all this, the king will say, “This wife really loves me.” But if she does not, beware! If she is lazy, the lash of whips made from the hide of the hippopotamus, or of the manatee, will remind her of her duties, and of the love she owes to her husband.