The Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter

by Walter Dalrymple Maitland Bell

A FOOT SOLDIER.

To the African a wife is everything. It is equivalent in Western life to having a living pension bestowed on you. For your wife builds your house, provides wood and water, grows your food, makes the cooking utensils, mats, beds, etc., not only for your use, but also for sale. You sell them and pocket the proceeds. Not only this, for she brews beer from the corn which she grows, and you drink it. She drinks it and likes it, too, but naturally, you see that she does not overdo it. Then, again, she bears you children, who also work for you, and you sell the females. It really amounts to selling, although it is very bad manners to speak of the transaction as such. Marriage they call it, and dowry they call the price paid. Here again you are the lucky recipient of this dowry, and not the girl. True, you have to provide your daughter with certain things, such as a few mats, cloths, cooking pots, etc., most of which your wife makes. From all this it will be seen what very desirable creatures women are in Africa. There, as elsewhere, will be found bad wives, but where we have to grin and bear them, or divorce them, or be divorced by them, the African can send his back to her father and demand her sister in her place. This procedure is only resorted to in the case of a wife failing to bear children; any other fault, such as flirting, nagging, quarrelling, impudence, neglect or laziness, being cured at home by means best known to themselves. It is not so surprising, after all, that a man will work for the better part of his life to serve a master who will, in the course of time, bestow upon him that priceless possession—a wife.

So far our attempts to gain the confidence of our escort had always been met with great reserve on their part. In the evenings round the camp fire is where the African usually unburdens himself, but our lot had evidently been warned not to open their mouths to the white men. These orders they very faithfully obeyed until we approached the boundaries of what might be called Buba Gida’s sphere of influence. Gradually they became less secretive, and we began to hear of strange doings. In a moment of excitement, brought on by the death of a fine buck, one of the old elephant hunters disclosed to me that the king’s people were in the habit of raiding slaves from the Lakka country. As we would enter this country in another day or two’s march for the peaceful purpose of hunting elephants, and as I hoped for the usual and invaluable help from the natives, this news was rather disconcerting, accompanied as we were by fifty or sixty slavers. In reply to the question, What will the natives do when they see us? came the cheering reply, Run like hell!

Where elephant frequent settled country, and especially where they are in the habit of visiting plantations, it is essential for the hunter to be on the most friendly terms with the natives. He must at all costs avoid frightening them. The natural suspicion with which all strangers are regarded must somehow be allayed. Generally speaking, the hunter’s reputation precedes him from country to country, and, if that reputation be a good one, he is welcomed and helped. Only when tribes are at serious war with each other is there a break in this system of intelligence.

On entering the Lakkas’ country, therefore, we were severely handicapped, firstly, by not having previously visited either it or its neighbours, and, secondly by having as our safari a villainous band of slave-raiders, already well known as such to the Lakkas. I anticipated trouble, not so much from the natives as from our own band of thieves. I could see that it would be necessary to take the first opportunity of impressing upon the king’s people in as forcible a manner as possible that we white men were running the show and not they.

To my astonishment, on arriving at the first Lakka village we and our raiders were received in quite a friendly way. On enquiring into this, I found that this section of the Lakkas admitted allegiance to Buba Gida and were at war with the section further on, where we hoped to meet with elephant. Hence our welcome.

A chance to assert ourselves occurred on the first day of our arrival among the Lakkas, for no sooner had the camp been fixed up than our merry band had a Lakka youth caught and bound and heavily guarded. On enquiring into this affair it transpired that this youth had been taken in a previous raid, but had escaped and returned to his country. We had the lad straight away before us, asked him if he wished to go back to Buba Gida, and, on his saying that this was the last thing he desired, at once liberated him. He did not wait to see what else might happen; he bolted. Of course, the king’s people were furious with us. We, on our part, were thoroughly disgusted with Buba Gida for having designed to carry on his dirty work under the cloak of respectability afforded by the presence of two Englishmen on a shooting trip. We had all of them before us, and explained that the very first time we found any one of them attempting anything in the slaving line we would tie him up and march him straight to the nearest military post. We let them see that we were thoroughly determined to take complete command of the expedition from now on, and had little further trouble from them. Later on, it is true, we were annoyed to find that small native boys attached themselves as camp followers to our safari. They rather embarrassed us by saying that they wished to go with us, but they quickly disappeared when their probable future was explained to them. I reckon that we must have spoiled Buba Gida’s scheme to the extent of at least a round dozen of valuable slaves.

After all our trekking and the fussing with semi-civilised Africans, it was a great relief to find ourselves one day at the entrance to a village of the real genuine wild man. We had been passing through No Man’s Land—as we may call the neutral zone between tribes at war—for the last few hours. As the grass was high at this season we had not been spotted, and our arrival at the village was a complete surprise. Amid terrific excitement women and children rushed for the bush, fowls raced about, dogs barked, while the young men appeared from the huts with their shields and spears, and faces dangerously scared. This is the moment of all others when anything but a perfectly tranquil outward appearance generally precipitates a tragedy. Either a native bloods his spear or arrow in the body of one of the visitors or some strung-up visitor fires his gun, when the situation gets out of hand at once. At these tense moments the appearance of a perfectly cool white man, for preference unarmed, acts in a most extraordinary manner. But duck or dodge, or get close to cover, or put up your rifle, and the thing is spoiled. There is no finer instance of this than when Boyd-Alexander went to visit the Sudan chief who had sworn to do him in. Without rifle or escort Boyd-Alexander voluntarily strolled up to this man’s stronghold, knowing, as he must have done, having been warned by the Sudan authorities, that his only chance was to appear perfectly unafraid, or to avoid the country altogether. He visited the chief and, in due course, left the village, closely followed by him. In full view of the inhabitants of his village it was certainly “up to” the chief to show his hand, and I am convinced that he was on the very point of murdering Boyd-Alexander when he turned a perfectly unmoved face upon the chief and fixed him with a steady look. The chief slunk back to his village, while Boyd-Alexander pursued his way. From those who can read between the lines his description in “From the Niger to the Nile” of this little incident is an epic.