The jungle folk of Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

In the primeval forest the undergrowth is not dense and travel is not so difficult. But as the natives are always moving their towns and abandoning old sites, a considerable portion of the forest is the growth of a few years; and here the undergrowth is so dense and matted that there is no possibility of passing through it except as one tunnels his way with the cutlass, and the jungle closes on both sides of the path like a wall. This is the usual character of the bush along the rivers. There are not many flowers in the forest. The most common is the orchid. But flowers are numerous in the clearings and more open places. In particular there is a lovely convolvulus of delicate lavender that climbs over all the lower growth of the clearing and blooms in such profusion as to give its colour to the landscape. The impression of the beauty or the ugliness of the forest depends largely upon whether one sees it in the wet or the dry season. In the dry season, travelling on a fairly good road, the idea of the cathedral with its solemn majesty was often present with me; I was impressed with its beauty and enjoyed the solitude. But in the wet season I loathed it. Who could enjoy, or even recognize, beauty while standing knee-deep in mud? Its stillness is not the stillness that speaks to the mind and heart. It is dull and dead.

We had twenty-eight native carriers (whom we must call porters when speaking to Englishmen) each with a load of about forty pounds. They often carry more than twice that weight over the present road to Efulen; seventy pounds is the standard load. But besides the better roads there is also this great difference that the natives were at that time new to the work of carrying heavy loads, to which they have since become accustomed. The present young men have grown up in the work. Besides our personal effects and food supplies we carried trade-goods, with which to buy food and building material from the natives, and to pay native workmen. There was no currency in that interior tribe. We paid out principally salt, beads, and brass rods, the latter used for ornaments for the legs and arms. After a year there was some demand for cloth—highly coloured prints—and other articles for which there was no use at first.

We were dressed in suits of denim or other cheap material. I bought my suit at a trading-house in Batanga for two dollars, and packed away all my better clothing. Beneath the coat I wore a heavy woollen undershirt, the only proper kind for the tropics, and proper all the time, no matter what else one may choose or discard. We were glad to discard the helmet while travelling in the forest, and to substitute a felt hat. Tastes differ widely as to the best footwear; but I like best for such a road a pair of canvas shoes with rubber soles, alternating with stout leather shoes every second or third day. Each man carries a wooden stick or staff about five feet in length. When a man has chosen and trimmed for himself a stick that exactly suits him, he becomes attached to it with a sentimental regard, according to the distance he has travelled with it and the journeys he has made. He is sensitive to any criticism passed upon it; and no experienced bush-traveller will make disparaging remarks about another man’s staff, but around the camp-fire they will vie with each other in praising each his own. I remember mine very well and I would give much to have it now.

Perhaps this attachment is the stronger because, as a rule, we do not carry watches in that country. Most watches will run only for a short time. A fine gold watch is the most useless of all; the very cheapest will run longest. When I began to tell this in America, I found that I was sacrificing my reputation for accuracy of statement: whereupon I stated the facts to a jeweller who, after consideration, said there was a very plain explanation, namely, that the hair-spring of the more expensive movements is usually finer and more closely coiled than that of the cheaper watches, so fine that the least rust upon it would interfere with its motion.

Our outfit for the road was very light. This was Dr. Good’s habit and with me it was a kind of instinct. We were measuring our strength against the forces of the forest, testing our ability to endure and to wrest from the forest itself the means of enduring. Having this feeling, to carry along the ready-made comforts of civilization seems like taking a mean advantage of nature. Some few things must be taken. But the opinions of the wisest differ as to what those few things should be, and each man ardently believes in, and advocates his own outfit. The explanation is that nothing of the outfit except food is an absolute necessity. Other things, however important, are of the nature of comforts; and what is necessary to one man’s comfort, another can often do without.

One may suggest for such a journey a good water-proof bag containing a sweater, extra socks and pajamas, and two blankets. A good rubber blanket is a necessity if one expects to sleep in the open forest. Canned foods, of course, are used, and for cooking utensils, a frying-pan and a sauce-pan will suffice for three, and a cup, tin plate, knife, fork and spoon for each. Several cutlasses are necessary for clearing the road, preparing beds, cutting fire-wood and other uses. Matches also must be taken and kept in a dry place. A few towels and toilet articles complete the necessary outfit. On our first journey we took camp-beds, but only because we had need of them at Efulen. I never carried one again.

Besides this general and common outfit each man nearly always has some one article that nobody else carries but himself, and that, in his mind, is more important than anything else. I do not remember what Mr. Kerr’s indispensable was, for we never walked together except this once, it being necessary that either one of us should stay at the station. Mine, however, was a pair of leather gloves, at which Dr. Good used to laugh; for we travelled often together. But they saved me much loss of blood and the pain of torn hands from the brambles and long briers that stretched across the path, and they also enabled me to protect my face from them by pushing them aside better than I could have done with bare hands. Dr. Good’s indispensable was a mosquito-net with canopy and sides which he also urged upon me as a necessity and which I insisted was a superfluity. There were no mosquitoes in our camping-places in the forest; but he used the net to protect against damp and against any slight motion of the air, for one takes cold very easily and the least cold is liable to induce fever. We had many a good-natured “scrap” over these hobbies; but neither of us ever converted the other. There was, however, one article with which I was always well supplied and for which Dr. Good himself usually thanked me before the end of a journey, and that was the indispensable safety-pin. I never foresaw any particular use for it, but many uses unforeseen invariably emerged as we travelled. Some travellers carry a piece of oiled baize in a convenient and accessible place. It can be used to sit down on; for one can never sit on the ground, even if it is dry, because of insects. But its special use is for an apron, which is attached with safety-pins and worn in the morning through the dripping shrubbery. If one is wearing high shoes he can even keep his feet dry by this means.

The road that threads the forest from Batanga to Efulen was a narrow foot-path twelve inches wide and poorly beaten. The wet season had begun and the rains had been falling two or three weeks. The road was not even as good as we had expected; for Dr. Good, who had fully described it, had passed over it at the end of the dry season, when the road was at the best. The typical African road is a contorted line that vacillates and swerves to right and left, turning and twisting at acute angles continually, and often for no apparent reason, as if it had been made by some crazy person. But in such cases there was always an original reason even when it no longer exists. For instance, the native carrying a load finds a tree fallen across the path. It is easier for him with his load to go around it than to climb over it. But a log does not remain long in an African forest. Between insects and rot it is soon demolished. Meantime, along its length there has grown up a dense undergrowth; and rather than cut through this the native keeps to the path, now beaten, which passed around the log; and the new traveller wonders why the path should not be straight. It is estimated that an African road is a third longer in each mile by reason of its crookedness. But this is not the only peculiarity of a forest path. African trees have enormous roots, and much of them is above ground. This is the chief obstruction, and there are many others.

No two successive steps are the same length, nor upon the same level. If the attention is diverted for a moment, one may stumble and fall. The road carefully avoids the hills and keeps down in the lowest parts. The natives, carrying loads, dislike climbing, but they have not the least aversion to mud; indeed, it has some advantages for their bare feet. One passes through every variety of it and every depth. The road often follows the bed of a stream for a distance, a foot or more under water or in mud, according to the season. Meanwhile, the part of the traveller that is above ground is kept moist by the dripping shrubbery that meets across the path. Many of the shrubs are covered with thorns, spines and hooks. One of the worst of these, armed with sharp spikes and not easy to see because it bears but little foliage, sprawls across the path just high enough to catch the average man under the chin, where it leaves a mark that looks as if it might have been made with a cross-cut saw. Then, again, there are long stretches of road that are not any worse than crossing a ploughed field after a rain. Every day, and sometimes several times a day, we forded streams, often wading to the waist, and we rather enjoyed it after the mud.