It is said, I believe, of the Englishwoman-
"If she will, she will, you may depend on't;
If she won't, she won't, and there's an end on't."
I may safely predicate the same of the negro, who owns, like the goose, a "singularly inflexible organization." Whenever he can, he will, and he must, have his head. Gidi Mavunga would not even break his fast before touching the cloth and beads, which are to pay for guidance and carriage. The hut-door was closed, and in half an hour all was settled to every one's satisfaction. Yet the veteran did not disdain a little rascality. Awaiting his opportunity, he tossed into a dark corner a little bundle of two fancy cloths which I had given the "linguistero" and, when detected, he shamelessly declared that such people have no right to trade.
Finally, our departure was settled for the next morning, and the women at once began their preparations. Although they have sperm- candles, torches are preferred for the road; odoriferous gums are made up, as in the Gaboon, with rags or splints of bark; hence the old writers say, "instead of putting wicks into the torches, they put torches into the wicks." The travelling foods are mostly boiled batatas (sweet potatoes), Kwanga, a hard and innutritious pudding-like preparation of cassava which the "Expedition" (p. 197) calls "Coongo, a bitter root, that requires four days' boiling to deprive it of its pernicious quality;" this is probably the black or poisonous manioc. The national dish, "chindungwa," would test the mouth of any curry-eater in the world: it is composed of boiled ground-nuts and red peppers in equal proportions, pounded separately in wooden mortars, mixed and squeezed to drain off the oil; the hard mass, flavoured with salt or honey, will keep for weeks. The bees are not hived in Congo-land, but smoked out of hollow trees: as in F. Po and Camarones Peaks, they rarely sting, like the harmless Angelito of the Caraccas, "silla," or saddleback; which Humboldt ("Personal Narrative," chap. xiii.) describes as a "little hairy bee, a little smaller than the honey-bee of the north of Europe." Captain Hall found the same near Tampico; and a hive-full was sent to the blind but ingenious Francis Huber of Geneva, who died in 1831. This seems to be the case with the busy hymenopter generally in the highlands of Africa; the lowland swarms have been the terror of travellers from Mungo Park's day to that of the first East African Expedition.
About noon we were visited by the confidential slaves of a neighbouring chief, who prospectively welcomed us to his territory. These men were gaudily attired in cast-off clothes, and in the crimson night-caps formerly affected by the English labourer: on the mountains, where the helmet is confined to royalty, it is the head-dress used for state occasions. They sat in the hut, chatting, laughing, and discussing palm wine by the gallon, till they had their wicked will in the shape of a bottle of gin; after this, they departed with many low congés.
It was a study to see Gidi Mavunga amidst the vassals and serfs of his own village. He had no moated castle, no "Quinquengrogne;" but his habitation was grander far,—that glorious hill-side, with all its prospects of mountain and river, field and forest, valley and village. As he sat upon the mat under his little piazza, all the dependants gathered in an outer semicircle, the children, dogs, and cats forming an inner chord. A crowd of "moleques" placed before him three black pots, one containing a savoury stew, the others beans and vegetables, which he transferred to a deep platter, and proved himself no mean trencherman. The earthenware is of native make, by no means ornamental, but useful because it retains the heat; it resembles the produce of the Gold Coast, and the "pepper-pot" platter of the West Indies. His cup was filled as fast as he drained the palm wine, and, at times, he passed a huge mouthful to a small son or daughter, smiling at the serious and awkward attempts at deglutition. The washing of hands and mouth before and after feeding shows progress after Tuckey's day (p. 360). We were not asked to join him: an African, when upon a journey, will beg for everything he sees you eat or drink, but there is no return in kind. I have read of negro hospitality, but it has never been my fate to witness an approach to that virtue. The chief will, it is true, quarrel with you if his house be passed without a visit; but his object in taking you in is to make all he can of you. If a purse be pulled out, he waxes wroth, because he wishes to secure at once the reputation of generosity and the profits of a present doubling the worth of a regular "addition." When Gidi Mavunga rose from his meal, the elder dependants took his place; the junior bipeds followed, and the remnants were thrown to the quadrupeds. It was a fair copy in black of a baronial and mediæval life.
The dogs were not neglected during the meal; but over-eagerness was repressed by a stout truncheon lying handily near the old negro Jarl. The animals are small and stunted, long-nosed and crooked-limbed, with curly tails often cut, sharp ears which show that they have not lost the use of the erecting muscles, and so far wild that they cannot bark. The colour is either black and white or yellow and white, as in Stambul and India. Overrun with ticks and foul with mange, they are too broken-spirited to rob, except by secretly sneaking into the huts, and, however often beaten off, they return to the charge like sitting hens. The people prize these wretched tikes, because they are ever ready to worry a stranger, and are useful in driving game from the bush. Yet they barbarously ill-treat them. The hungry cats are as poor a breed as the pure English, and, though no one feeds them, these domesticated tigerkins swarm. The only happy pets are the parrots. Every village swarms with hogs, the filthy wealth of the old Saxon proprietor, and their habits are disgusting as their forms are obscene. Every Anglo-Indian will understand what I mean.
My memory of "Congo chop" is all in its favour: I can recommend it even to "Fin Bee." The people of S'a Leone declare that your life is safe when you can enjoy native food. Perhaps this means that, during the time required to train the palate, strangers will have escaped their "seasoning" fevers and chills. But foreigners will certainly fare better and, cæteris paribus, outlive their brother whites, when they can substitute African stews for the roast and boiled goat and cow, likest to donkey- meat, for the waxy and insipid potato and for heavy pudding and tart, with which their jaded stomach is laden, as if it had the digestion of north latitude 50°. It is popularly believed that the Germans, who come from the land of greatest extremes, live longer at the White Man's Grave than the English, whereas the Spaniards are the most short-lived, one consul per annum being the normal rate. Perhaps the greater "adaptability" of the Teuton explains the cause.
The evening began with a game of ball in the large open space amongst the houses forming the village square. The implement was a roll of palm-coir tightly bound with the central fibre of the plantain-leaf. The players, two parties of some twenty slaves, of all ages and sizes, mingled, each side striving to catch the ball, and with many feints and antics to pass it on to a friend. When it fell out of bounds, the juniors ran to pick it up with frantic screams. It was interesting, as showing the difference between the highlander and the lowlander; one might pass years on the Congo plains without seeing so much voluntary exertion: yet a similar game of ball is described by the Rev. Mr. Waddell ("Twenty-nine years in the West Indies and Central Africa," chap. xvii. London, Nelsons, 1863). The evening ended, as it often does before a march, when rest is required, with extra hard work, a drinking bout deep as the Rhineland baron's in the good old time, and a dance in which both sexes joined. As there were neither torches nor moon, I did not attend; the singing, the shouting, and the drumming, which lasted till midnight, spoke well for the agility and endurance of the fair montagnardes.
What lightens Gidi Mavunga's steps is the immediate prospect of the Munlola or preliminary showers, which, beginning in mid- September, last, with a certain persistence of fall, till October. During the Munlola, the sea-breeze is silent, and the sky is clad with a very thin mist, which, however, supplies abundant downfalls. The year in the Lower Congo corresponds with that of the Gaboon in practice, if not in theory, and the storms are furious as those of Yoruba, where the seasons are, of course, inverted, the great rains extending from May to August. The climate is capricious, as everywhere about the equator, and the nearer the river the heavier are the showers. The people double their lives by reckoning the rains as one year, and the dries as another: when the old missionaries wished to explain that the Saviour offered Himself for the sins of man at the age of thirty- three, they said that he was sixty-six seasons old.