Wild life under the equator

by Paul B. Du Chaillu

We all turned out with our Ashingas, leaving, of course, Njali and Nola to take charge of the premises. We left them the three spare guns. We took the dogs with us.

We captured, in the first place, a hyena, which I dispatched as it laid entangled in the net with a bullet through the head. It uttered a fearful groan. We captured a porcupine, which we killed with a club. Then we laid unsuccessfully the Ashingas three times, and I began to think that we would have nothing but hyena for dinner and supper, and no skins to make clothes with. We must make another trial.

MAKING CLOTHES.

We went a long distance to haul our nets again, and then captured two ncheris and two nchombis. We killed them on the spot with clubs, and then returned home.

I insisted on having these four animals skinned, for I wanted their skins to make a pair of trowsers. We had taken off the hyena skin and left its body on the spot, no one fancying the meat, especially as we had other game to eat.

Njali and Nola received us with open arms, but did not show their heads above the fence until they had heard our peculiar whistle. I was glad of our success, for I wanted some clothes very much.

I dried the skins, and then tried to tan them by beating them, and using the bark of a certain tree. Then with the fibres of the leaves of the pine-apple I made some thread; and I had with me strong needles, which I used in preparing the skins of animals. I cut these skins in such a shape that I thought I would make from them a pretty comfortable pair of pantaloons.

I wish you had seen me dressed in those pantaloons. They were very tough and hard. Then I made a kind of shirt with the skin of the hyena; that is, I joined two flat pieces together, left a hole for my head to pass through, and on each side holes for my arms. I did not want any sleeves. This hyena shirt was short, and only reached my waist. How strangely I looked, dressed in these long shaggy skins!

Afterward we went to work, and closed with sticks and branches of trees a little shallow creek—almost a pond—which communicated with a larger one, in order to prevent the fish from going out, and thus there was a prospect of having plenty of fish to eat. Then, when this work was done, we went again in search of bee-hives, which are abundant in these forests. We discovered two, which were very high, and, of course, in the hollow of the trees. We concluded to come and smoke them out the next day.

These two hives were made by two different kinds of bees, one very small black kind, looking almost like a little fly, and the other by a bee of the size of our bees in America; the honey of the latter is excellent when the comb is white and new.