LITTLE FRANCES, BORN IN AFRICA.
Ah me, how lonely one becomes for the sight of a white child when he has lived some years in the jungles!
Several towns had been built along the way and in one of them we stopped each night, where we occupied native houses and slept on native beds of straight bamboo poles covered with armfuls of grass—as good a bed as one could desire. The numerous ticks in the grass were converted into bed-ticks—such was our resourcefulness of expedient. The only dislikable part of the journey was rising so early in the morning when we could have slept on for hours, after the walk of the preceding day. But an incident of that journey impressed it distinctly upon my mind that there is some advantage in eating breakfast before daylight. One morning we had an oatmeal breakfast. The day dawned upon two tardy boarders before they had eaten and they were horrified at discovering that the oatmeal was full of vermiform animalcules. Of course, they could not eat it and had the poorer breakfast in consequence, and the other nine thought that it served them quite right for being so late. A doubt has always lurked in the recesses of my mind as to whether the joke was really on the two or on the nine.
We did not, as in former days, keep steadily to a regular pace without stopping, even for hours at a time, and walking in comparative quiet. For the hammock carriers go very rapidly, on a dog-trot, continually shouting, and a white man follows immediately behind each hammock. They repeat a regular call and response, half song, half shout, as if to sustain their animation and courage. What wonderful voices they have! The forest, startled from her deep repose as we pass along, rebounds with shout and answering echo, while we dash on over height and depth, over rock and stream and mire, for an hour. Then, out of breath and in copious perspiration, we sit down for fifteen or twenty minutes, and at the word of command we are off again with a dash and a shout. It is all very pleasant and a great improvement on the old way, although one pays very little attention to the forest and is wholly oblivious to its moods. But the old way is still the regular way on all roads except those few which the white man has undertaken to improve.
And this disposition to “improve” everything he puts his hand to is a radical difference between the native and the white man. The mental habit of the native is contentment with things as they are; in which he is far more happy than fortunate. He would let this old world, or this old “bush” as he calls it, stay as it is to the end of time. The unhappy restlessness of the white man, his dissatisfaction with what he has and his longing for what he has not, his eagerness for change and “improvement,” the native is sometimes disposed to regard as a morbid mental disease. But the greatest wonder of it is that the white man includes the native himself in his program of improvement. He finds him a denizen of the forest, his mental habitudes like her changing moods, now sullen and cruel, now gentle and cheerful for a little while, partaking of her darkness mingled here and there with broken beams of light; and as he clears a way through the deep forest making the darkness light, so he labours that a gleam of heaven’s light may shine down into the benighted native soul; that it may lighten the path of his destiny more and more, and lead him on, in ways of purity and peace, till the gleam become the “perfect day.”
V
THE CAMP-FIRE
If it is dreadful to be overtaken in the forest by the punctual night of the tropics, while unprepared, without camp or comfort, yet, to the weary man, after a good bath and a good supper, and with a good bed awaiting him, the brief period of the departing day and the increasing camp-fire glow, the smell of wood smoke and the crackle of the burning log, are a delightful experience.
The camp is usually an open glade, where the night is not so sudden in its fall. The shadows grow longer in the evening light, and the gray twilight deepens till the stars shine through. Then in the red glow of the camp-fire, phantom shadows and eerie forms flit to and fro, approaching towards us and receding into the darkness like spirits impelled by curiosity, and planning either play or mischief according to the mood of the observer. In the day the man is properly the master of his mood, but in this hour it is pleasant to relax and let the mood be master of the man, giving a free rein to fancy.
Immediately after supper it was my custom to hold prayers with the carriers. Then, if the labour of the day has been easy, or a Sunday rest has intervened, they become more sociable and communicative than usual, and often prolong the evening with camp-fire stories. They are born orators and can tell a story to perfection, whether it be a fable handed down from others, or a narrative from their own experience. The knowledge of the native may be ever so limited and his thought meagre, but he can always give it appropriate and striking form and express himself in forceful and sometimes beautiful language. He never hesitates nor becomes incoherent; his words flow like a river and keep well within the course of his purpose. His gestures are animated and infinitely varied, sometimes grotesque, more often graceful, and always expressive.