If the colony decides to move to other territory, either because of enemies or the scarcity of food, they all assemble and hold a farewell gathering in which there is much mourning and apparent grief at forever leaving their aged kin to the fate of the wilds. If they are possibly able to walk, they are given patient assistance in travelling along. Sometimes, when they are deserted, sympathetic friends return for days with berries and koola nuts, until at last the colony has gone so far away that none dare return alone, in which event these helpless superannuated members are left to die in their lone tree-top beds.
Many of these beds are as well made as the tree-beds of human beings, and even better than the beds of the savage Dyaks of Borneo. They are usually located in tall trees, inaccessible to leopards and out of reach of their most dreaded of all enemies, the terrible hordes of war-ants. From these nothing escapes—not even elephants and tigers.
The arrival of a baby to these nkengos is of far more importance in their tree-top village, than in a human city. Each of the female relatives, and also the aged males, takes special interest in the new-comer, and they chatter around his little grape-vine cradle with much enthusiasm, shaking their heads and delicately handling his tiny hands and toes as though he were the baby of a king.
This baby is much stronger and quicker to learn than human babies; for when he is only two days old he is able to cling to his mother, so that she can carry him with her on her hunting trips. If he becomes too noisy from sheer delight when she is travelling through the forest with him, she slaps him, in an attempt to quiet him, lest the leopards get him.
At night he sleeps snugly by his mother's side in the great tree-bed, and she never allows him to crawl out of her arms for fear that he fall to the depths below. She loves him dearly, and watches with human eagerness for his first tooth. He loves his mother and will stand for hours while she dresses his hair; or lie on her breast as she rubs his little back.
These wild-children are always ill-tempered and self-willed. No human mother has to show more patience and love than does the nkengo mother. She takes the greatest delight in his first efforts at climbing and hunting, and for hours she and his admiring relatives will watch him attempting to climb a cocoanut tree. Sometimes she will climb just behind him to catch him if he falls or becomes frightened.
His arms soon become very powerful, for he is constantly swinging, climbing, and exercising by hanging from a bough with one hand while he pulls himself up with the great power of his muscles. He is able to gather koola nuts long before his jaws are strong enough to crack them; so his fond mother cracks them for him until his hands and mouth are stronger. Like all babies, his ambition is to be big and strong like his father.
Some of the apes are most intelligent and human, and, as allies to man, are more desirable than certain of the human savages. Dr. Livingstone, in his Last Journals, describes one he first discovered. "Their teeth," he says, "are slightly human, but their canines show the beast by their large development. The hands, or rather the fingers, are like those of the natives. They live in communities consisting of about a dozen individuals, and are strictly monogamous in their conjugal relations, and vegetarian, or rather frugivorous, in their diet, their favourite food being bananas." The natives where these apes live are cannibals, and Dr. Livingstone says, "they are the lowest of the low." One of their number, who had committed a great murder, offered his grandmother "to be killed in expiation of his offence, and this vicarious punishment was accepted as satisfactory."
Thus it is evident that certain of these wild-creatures—like the sokos—have a more correct conception of justice than their human associates, the savages. At least the animals do not make the innocent suffer for the guilty, and give their lives unjustly. Should a soko try to take another's wife he is publicly punished by the tribe. These animals have a great sense of humour and fully enjoy a practical joke. Strangely enough, they never attack women and children, but if any man approaches them with a spear or gun, they try to rush upon him, often at the expense of their own life, and wrest the weapon from him. Most of them are exceedingly kind and civilised in their actions, and natives always say, "Soko is a man, and nothing bad in him."
Often they kidnap babies and carry them up into trees. But these are never harmed and the apes are ever ready to exchange them for bananas. The robbery is, no doubt, for the purpose of extortion. If perchance one of their children is stolen, the entire forest sets up a scream and wail until it is returned. Old hunters and travellers say that they would rather steal the child of a native savage than to take one of the sokos. If one of the soko children disappears, and they do not know what became of it, they immediately send out detectives throughout the country to seek for it. And woe be the home where a stolen soko baby is found!