The jungle folk of Africa

by Robert H. Milligan

Meanwhile, I had walked on far ahead until I thought that the carriers might require all the daylight that was left to catch me, and then I stopped and waited for them; though I had not yet reached the camp. As time passed and no carriers appeared I began to feel uneasy. The chill of the evening was approaching, and I had not even a coat; so I began to walk back and forth rapidly to keep warm. Finally, two carriers arrived. One of them had my food, which was fortunate; but the other had nothing that I wanted on the road. The lost Galway had my bed and extra clothing, and even the matches. We waited for them anxiously and called loudly, but there was no answer. Then swiftly, as always in the forest of the tropics, the day turned into night: “At one stride comes the dark.” A heavy, palpable darkness, like smoke, enshrouded us and rose higher till it blotted out the leafy canopy and blackened the very sky. The opacity of the darkness was such that we could not see each other, nor could I see my hand when I placed it before my eyes.

For a while I forgot the loss of the other carriers in thankfulness for the company of these two men. For, however kindly the mood of the forest by day, or however joyful the camp-fire by night in congenial company, yet, to one alone through the night, without comfort or means of rest, and with the possibility of being lost, the forest is truly dreadful. One in such a plight interprets the forest through the medium of his misery and his fear. The intolerable vastness of his prison dungeon suggests the “outer darkness,” and the experience of a soul forsaken. I was miserably cold and had nothing to protect me; nor had I a bed except a rubber blanket. I kept walking back and forth on a bit of path a few yards long, notwithstanding that I had walked all day. There was but little rest. Occasionally I threw myself down on the rubber blanket but was so cold that before long I rose again and began walking. Fortunately I was in unusually good health, for Africa, or the exposure might have resulted even more seriously than it did. My cook, Eyambe, a Batanga man, who had worked for us at Efulen for several months, possessed the remnant of a shirt, so much prized that he had carried it with him to the bush, lest his numerous relatives, male and female, should wear it out in his absence. He came to me in the darkness feeling his way, and said, “Mr. Milligan, my shirt, you must take him and wear him, please. This bush he no be too bad for we black man; but my heart cry for white man.”

I took it, of course, and wore it. But the cheer that I derived from the kindness of his heart was greater than the poor comfort of the shirt.

I thanked God when morning dawned at last; but it is unnecessary to say that I was in poor condition for walking next day, the last day of the journey. I knew that the exposure would bring on fever and I walked more rapidly than usual so as to reach Batanga as soon as possible. I sometimes even ran, as if in precipitate flight from a pursuing beast. The part of the road over which I passed that day was quite new and poorly cleared. My clothing may not have been stout enough to withstand the thorns and briers which I encountered; or else, in my hurry, I was reckless. At any rate, when I emerged from the forest, behind Mr. Gault’s house, one leg of my trousers was gone from above the knee, and the other leg was also exposed through several rents, the remainder of the trousers being fastened with numerous safety-pins. I was also scratched and bleeding more than on any previous trip.

As I turned and looked back from the beach towards the gloomy and sullen forest, in the vivid realization of the exposure of that long night and the fever which I knew was imminent, I had the feeling which Stanley describes when he and his long caravan emerged from the dark prison forest after the immurement of several months, in which scores of their comrades had died by the way, the whole caravan now enfeebled and wasted with hunger, the black, glossy skin turned an ashen gray. They ascended a hill and first looking up yearningly towards the bright blue sky, they then turned with a sigh and looked back over the sable forest that heaved away to the infinity of the west. In their sudden exaltation they shook their clenched fists at it, uttering imprecations, and with gestures of defiance and hate. They apostrophized it for its cruelty to themselves and their kinsmen; they compared it to hell, and accused it of the murder of a hundred of their comrades. But the forest which lay vast as a continent before them, and drowsy, like a great beast, answered not a word, but rested in its infinite sullenness, remorseless and implacable.

I was not mistaken in my apprehension of fever. I did not return to Efulen again. One fever followed another in quick succession, becoming at length so serious that my fellow missionaries at Batanga united in urging me not to risk another attack. An English steamer on the outward voyage called just at that time and I went south to Gaboon, where I sailed on a French steamer for Marseilles and thence home.

Little did I think when I was leaving Efulen for a few days, as I supposed, that I was really taking a long leave of Efulen and Africa, not again to see either for four years, and never again to see Dr. Good. That last morning, when I was setting out for the beach, he walked with me down the long Efulen hill to the foot, where we stood perhaps half an hour, formulating our expectations and making the clearest-cut plans, none of which were realized, although they pertained to the immediate future.

The element of accident is a constant factor in Africa, that continually changes the course of our reckoning and overturns our surest calculations. Accidents are no more numerous there than elsewhere, but they are more serious. Climbing a mountainside, a slip of the foot is fraught with more danger than on a level road. In the hostile climate of Africa, the smallest accident, a moment’s incaution or forgetfulness on your own part or on the part of others, may change the entire future. Elsewhere the best-laid plans of men have about an equal chance with the best-laid plans of mice, if the observation of Burns is to be trusted. But in Africa the probability of the future is entirely with the mice.

While I was in Africa a second time and living in Gaboon, two hundred miles further south on the coast, I visited Efulen once more. The road was much more improved than when I had seen it last. The sun shone through the arcade of vines and branches and formed upon the pathway a filigree of gold and silver light. The mode of travel was different accordingly. It was the best time of the year and there was a happy party of eleven, so that the journey was like a continuous picnic. Four of the party were ladies, three of whom were carried in hammocks and one rode a donkey. Besides, and chiefly, there was a very sweet little girl, two years old—a little splash of golden sunshine in the gray forest light, a dream of home, a fragment of a song⸺ Ah me! how lonely one becomes for the sight of a white child when he has lived some years in the jungles! Much of the time the ladies were walking and the hammocks empty. The hammock is suspended from a long bamboo pole borne upon the shoulders of two carriers. But the carriers must be relieved frequently, for it is dreadfully hard work. Six of the strongest native men are required for one hammock. Little Lois also had her special hammock, with a firm floor in it, so that she could sit upright, and she was perfectly happy when riding through the forest.