Wild life under the equator

by Paul B. Du Chaillu

These people are of a treacherous disposition, and are constantly quarrelling among their neighbors. They are most barbarous in their mode of warfare, in which women, children, and even babies are killed. Once while staying in a Bakalai village there were two women, who were quietly washing, and were killed and left there, until the people, wondering at their disappearance, looked for them, and found them dead.

When war has once really broken out in the country there is no rest or safety. No man or woman in any village can take a step in any direction, day or night, without fear of death. They lie in ambush to surprise each other’s villages. If they have guns, they come on the sly and shoot through the bark of which their houses are made, and kill sleeping persons; hence no one could sleep for two consecutive nights at the same place. In passing a tree, sometimes the enemy steals in behind, and will spear the poor luckless man, woman, or child. They use every unfair means of warfare; and the meaner the attack, and the greater the treachery, the more glory they have won. In such times of war the fires are put out after dark, because they give light to the enemy, and the glare of the fire makes blind those near it, while those who come through the darkness can see well. The people keep a dead silence, lest their voices should betray their whereabouts; the hunters are loth to hunt, for fear of falling into an ambush of some hidden enemies; the women and slaves fear to plant, and therefore every body approaches a condition of semi-starvation. This sometimes lasts for months. At last whole districts are depopulated; those who are not killed desert their villages to seek safety in some remote and unknown spot of the forest where they think they may be safer; hence very often I felt quite astonished to meet little villages far off. Many of their villages are palisaded, and their dogs keep watch.

Yes, among such people I have lived for a long time when there was war in the country, and I never knew if by mistake they might not kill me.

Now I have given you a slight idea of these warlike and treacherous Bakalai. I am happy to say that on the right bank of the Ovenga Quengueza has succeeded in preventing these wild men from making war upon each other’s villages.

We have come to shoot wild boar. It is the season when they are very fat, for we are in the month of March, and I tell you these wild boars of Equatorial Africa are glorious eating, and are magnificent beasts to bag.

Do not think they look like the wild boars they have in Europe. Nothing of the kind. It is no easy matter to come near enough to have a shot at these wild beasts, for they are exceedingly shy.

Night came, and my fellows were so afraid of evil spirits that they kept tremendous fires and kept talking all night, and when daylight came they felt so tired that they all went to sleep. This will never do, I said to myself, for if a man does not sleep at night he certainly can not work hard in the day.

After they awoke they came in a body, friend Malaouen leading, saying that we had better go and make our camp far away in the forest, for the place where we were was not good at all. I thought some of them might get ill through fear, so I concluded I had better move, for the people would lay the blame upon me. People have to be very prudent in such a wild country.

AFRICAN WILD BOAR.

So we moved our traps a few miles off and built our camp; this was hardly done when a storm burst upon us, and the rain poured down by bucketsful, and the thunder and the lightning was something terrific. It was a good thing that our shades were right, for we should have been wet to the skin.