All African houses are infested with rats and mice. The white man has introduced the cat. But there are still very few and they are so highly valued that among the Fang in late years a cat has been made a part of the dowry which a man pays for his wife. It was several months after our first house was built at Efulen before we were able to procure a cat from the coast. In that time the rats had full possession of the house and merely tolerated us. They gambolled all night over the beds in which we were sleeping, and over ourselves, sometimes even getting under the cover. I had always abhorred them, and I was led to use a mosquito-net, not for mosquitoes, but to keep the rats out. I never got so used to them but that I sprang out of bed whenever they got into it. Finding that the mosquito-net did not altogether suffice, I hit upon the happy expedient of keeping a lamp lighted in my room all night. This was effective to some extent, but only by driving them into the rooms occupied by my fellow missionaries, Dr. Good and Mr. Kerr, whose abhorrence of them, however, was not equal to mine. They wondered why I kept the lamp burning, but I did not tell them; for if we all had lamps the rats would have no choice of room, and surely a man has some right to profit by his own discovery. I desisted from this practice as soon as Dr. Good solved my purpose, which he did one night after he had gone to bed, and instantly announced it with a shout.
But at last a new missionary arrived in the shape of a gray cat, and we welcomed her with a lavish entertainment of sport and feast, delicately adapted to the instinct and the palate of her feline ladyship. All that night there was wild riot in the pantry where we had put her. In the morning that cat was the shape of a beer-barrel; and, besides, there lay on the pantry floor nine dead rats.
When I slept in native houses I always wore socks at night. The natives declare that the rats attack them during sleep, especially their feet. And they say that the rat blows upon the wound that it makes so that the sleeper will not feel it. From this belief there is a current proverb which they apply to a flatterer, or to one who, while using smooth words, would inflict an injury: “He blows upon the wound that he makes.”
The natives are perhaps more afraid of snakes than anything else, and with good reason. Africa is the home of deadly snakes. Most of them are nocturnal, and as the white man stays within doors at night, he may be in Africa many months before he realizes how abundant they are. Whenever it was necessary to go out at night, I always carried a long staff which I pushed along the path ahead of me.
One of our schoolboys at Gaboon, one night about eight o’clock, was walking down towards the beach in the middle of a wide road, when he stepped on a small snake. It bit him, and in about half an hour he died in great agony. At Batanga a woman one night, stepping out of her door, placed her foot on a snake that was coiled upon the door-step. She was bitten and died immediately. Sometimes they get into the thatch roofs of the houses, and between the bamboo walls; but this rarely happens in the better houses in which the white man lives. One of our missionary ladies at Benito, while she was sick in bed with fever, found a snake coiled under her pillow.
The natives upon being bitten by a snake immediately cauterize the wound with a red-hot iron; or, when that is not procurable, they will cut out a piece of the flesh around it, often cutting off a finger or a toe to save a life. They seem to have the idea that all snakes are deadly, and if one ask, in regard to a particular snake, whether it is poisonous, the certain response will be an exclamation of astonishment at his ignorance. They solemnly declare in regard to many varieties that they will spring at a man and go straight through his body. This is a strange delusion, considering their usual accuracy of observation and knowledge in regard to animals. It is probably accounted for by the superstitions that attach to snakes. In many African tribes the snake is sacred. In those tribes they are frequently used by the priests as an ordeal in discovering criminals. The people are ranged about the priest, who is a snake-charmer. He passes around bringing the snake into contact with each person. The person whom it bites is adjudged guilty.
The characteristic snakes, especially the deadly vipers which abound, are of bright and variegated colours, green, red, yellow and black. Some call them beautiful, but in most of us the association of ideas makes it impossible for us to see any beauty in a snake. Their colours are the very colours of nature around them; and therefore, instead of making them conspicuous, are really an approximation to invisibility—though I believe that the protective colouration of animals, as a principle, has been exaggerated.
A recent traveller says that in crossing the entire continent of Africa he saw only two snakes, and he adds that since he succeeded in killing both of them there are now no snakes in Africa, so far as he knows. I am reminded of a vivid experience when an American friend, Mr. Northam, stayed some months in Gaboon and collected biological specimens. Mr. Northam asked me whether there were many snakes around Gaboon. I told him that there were very few. At his suggestion I told my schoolboys that he wished to collect snakes and would give them something for all the valuable snakes they would bring to him. The immediate result was enough to make a man think that he had been suddenly precipitated into a state of delirium tremens. I had not supposed that there were so many snakes in all Africa. A continual procession of boys passed my door, each with some horrible kind of snake dangling from a stick, or dragging along the ground. And I had said there were but few snakes in Gaboon! The explanation is that I kept to the paths while abroad, and snakes are seldom found in the paths in the daytime; for they are mostly nocturnal in their habits, and I was not. But the boys know where to find them at any time.
After all, life in Africa is quite tolerable. As I think back over this formidable array of pests, I am somewhat surprised that I was not more conscious of them while in Africa, and that I had leisure to do anything else but fight them. The explanation is that, although one is fighting some of them all the time, one is never fighting them all at the same time.