A TRAMP THROUGH THE GREAT PYGMY FOREST
Pygmyland—Mr. A. B. Lloyd—From Uganda to the Congo mouth—The Great Forest—Vegetable and animal life—Gorillas—The elephant and the zareba—"Don't shoot; it's a man!"—The friendly Pygmies—Appearance and habits—Pygmy worship—The Ituri River—"Riding on a snake"—Down the Congo—Pygmyland and the Kingdom of Christ.
OF Stanley's different expeditions to Africa the greatest, though in some respects the least successful, was the last, when he marched by way of the Congo for the relief of Emin Pasha. And of all the thrilling chapters of In Darkest Africa, where he tells the story of that long struggle against frightful difficulties, none are more fascinating than those in which he describes his march through the vast primeval forest of the Upper Congo and its tributary, the Aruwimi, and his encounters with the strange dwarfish people who dwell in that region of interminable gloom. Rumors of the Pygmies had come to the civilized world from time to time, especially through the reports of Arab traders; but few persons believed those rumors to have much more reality behind them than the tales of Baron Münchausen. Stanley proved, however, that the existence of the Pygmies was a fact and not a fable. And it was natural that a later traveler, who, in addition to Stanley's courage and love of adventure, possessed a large share of the missionary spirit, should visit the Great Forest with the view of learning something about the religion of the Pygmy folk, and particularly of seeing what prospect there might be of carrying the light of Christian civilization with success into that shadowy world in which this unknown people lived and died.
Mr. A. B. Lloyd, the hero of this enterprise, was a young missionary of the C.M.S. who had been working for some time in the district of Tom on the western side of the Uganda Protectorate, under the very shadow of the giant snow-capped peaks of Ruwenzori, anciently known as the Mountains of the Moon. His experiences already had been of an exciting kind, for he had been in the thick of the fighting in Uganda during the year 1897, when the Soudanese troops mutinied, and Mwanga, the dethroned king, himself raised the standard of rebellion against the British rule. Primarily Mr. Lloyd's duties in the campaign had been to act as interpreter to the British forces and to give the wounded the benefit of such surgical skill as he possessed. But he was a good shot with a Martini rifle, and a "handy man" generally, who could work a Maxim gun in case of need. He did not hesitate, accordingly, as a loyal British subject, to play his part like a soldier in the suppression of the rebellion, along with the handful of white men who at that time represented Queen Victoria and the British flag in the heart of Africa. His companion and friend, the Rev. G. Pilkington, fell in the course of the fighting, and Mr. Lloyd himself had several narrow escapes in the eleven engagements in which he took part. At last, after a long period of great strain, a reaction came, and he was laid down with malarial fever. On recovering from the attack he was ordered to give up his work for a time and leave for England in order to recruit.
In these circumstances ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have made for home from Uganda by the ordinary East Coast route, via Zanzibar. But Mr. Lloyd was the hundredth man, and he decided to strike westwards right across the continent, by way of the Pygmy Forest of the Upper Aruwimi. His preparations were soon made, for unlike Stanley he had no intention of advancing at the head of a small army. He secured as a guide a man who had once before passed through the forest; furnished himself with provisions for three months; gathered a few porters; and with a bicycle, a camera, a donkey, and a faithful little dog named Sally, set out upon his tramp into the unknown.
For the first stages of the journey the way was plain. The mighty mass of Ruwenzori, which barred direct progress to the west, had to be circumvented, and thereafter the route lay through a charming plain abounding in game, where to the delight of his followers Mr. Lloyd was able to supply them plentifully with elephant steak and antelope joints. After five or six days' pleasant marching a river was crossed which forms the boundary between the Uganda Protectorate and the Congo Free State, and four days' progress through King Leopold's territory brought the party to a Belgian fort called Mbeni, where they rested for two days. Here they saw running along the western horizon a long dark belt which, they were told, was the commencement of the Great Forest. Leaving Mbeni they made for the center of this black line, and soon plunged into a mysterious region of darkness and solitude from which they were not to escape for many days.
The Great Forest of the Congo has an area of no less than 300,000 square miles—about six times the area of England not including Wales. The scenery which meets the traveler’s eye is described by Mr. Lloyd as possessed of a beauty of its own—a beauty that is thoroughly weird and uncanny. Majestic trees tower up towards the sky to the height often of 200 feet, interlacing their foliage so closely that not even the rays of the tropical sun are able to pierce through the dense barrier. The day at best is a dull twilight, while at night a blackness falls which might almost be described as solid. In spite of the want of sunshine, however, the vegetable life is wondrously profuse. Strange ferns and flowers spring on every hand, and gigantic creepers, with cables which are sometimes a foot in diameter, climb up the trunks and along the branches from tree to tree until the whole forest becomes a confused tangle of luxuriant growths.
The animal life is not less exuberant. Insects swarm and chirp and buzz on every hand. Birds of the most variegated plumage flit from bough to bough, some of them uttering deep musical sounds like the tolling of a bell, others of the parrot tribe whose only music is the harshest of screams. And there are other denizens of this vast woodland. "Elephants and buffalo are met with constantly, sometimes in herds, sometimes singly; wild pigs and forest antelope, many species of gazelles, chimpanzee, gorilla, and vast quantities of monkeys of every kind are seen; leopards, panthers, wild cats, civets, hyenas, and reptiles. Deadly snakes will be found hanging from the branches of the trees, or curled up amongst the decaying vegetation beneath; huge black adders, pythons, bright green snakes with wicked red eyes, whipcord snakes which look for all the world like green twigs. The forest is threaded with a network of rivers and streams, and all seemed full of fish. There are also crocodiles and hippos, water-snakes and lizards, leeches and slow-worms.”
With the great majority of these animals the traveler was quite familiar, for, by the necessity of his calling, a pioneer missionary in Central Africa is something of a sportsman, since the very life of his followers and himself when on the march may depend on his skill in shooting game. Elephants, buffaloes, and antelopes he had often dealt with. The roar of the lion and the yelp of the leopard in search of its prey were familiar sounds to his ears. But he had not long entered the forest when evidence came of the near presence of the gorilla, an animal which is only to be found in Central Africa, and there only in the depths of "the forest primeval.”
They had reached a particularly dark bit of the forest where no light at all seemed to come from the sky, so that, though it was only one p.m., a gloom as of night was all about them. Suddenly they heard a strange noise not far off, as of deep voices angrily quarrelling. For a moment everyone was scared, but the guide assured them that it was nothing else than nkima nkubwa ("big monkeys"). The Belgians at Fort Mbeni had told Mr. Lloyd that he would probably meet with gorillas, and gorillas these doubtless were. But for the present he was quite content with hearing their voices, having no desire at the head of his unarmed porters to make their closer acquaintance.
For six days the little expedition fought its way through wood and jungle without meeting with any adventures of an especially thrilling kind. Every day, however, the difficulties of steady progress grew greater. The undergrowth seemed to get thicker and thicker as they advanced, and Mr. Lloyd had to walk in front of the line with an old sword-bayonet, chopping a way for himself and for the porters who followed with the loads. The guide, too, it soon turned out, was hopelessly at sea as to direction; and so Mr. Lloyd had further to pilot his company as best he could with the help of a compass, trying to keep a north-westerly course with the view of striking the Ituri river, a principal affluent of the Aruwimi, and then of proceeding along its banks until they should emerge from the forest. Besides overcoming the obstacles presented by the tangles of bush and creeper, the caravan had every now and then to cross one or other of the numerous marshy streams which find their way through the forest, most of them being deep enough to take a man up to the armpits, and some of them so polluted with rotting vegetation as to be highly offensive to the smell.
A day's march under such conditions was very exhausting; but the work of the day was far from over when the day's tramp was done. A piece of ground had to be cleared where a tent could be pitched, and a strong zareba or fence built round it as a protection against wild animals—leopards, panthers, and elephants—which gave the travelers many an uneasy moment. Through the night they often heard elephants squealing loudly, and trampling through the bush in the immediate neighborhood of their little camp. And one morning when Mr. Lloyd had risen early and gone out of the tent before any of his men were awake, he found a huge old tusker with its head over the zareba, "evidently in deep thought, and wondering what on earth this could mean.”
Six days had passed since entering the forest, and not a trace of the Pygmies had anywhere been seen. Mr. Lloyd began to wonder if the Pygmy stories were really true. But on the seventh day, as he was walking in advance of the caravan, rifle in hand, accompanied by his black boy and looking out for a shot at some wild pigs which had been sighted shortly before, the boy stopped of a sudden, cried, "Monkey!" and pointed towards the top of a high cotton-tree beneath which they were passing. Mr. Lloyd looked up, and there sure enough was a creature which from its size he took to be a gorilla. Now his men had been glad to eat monkey-meat before this when nothing better was to be had. So he raised his rifle to his shoulder, took careful aim, and was in the act of pulling the trigger when his boy hastily pulled his arm and exclaimed, "Don't shoot—it's a man!" At once he saw that the boy was right. It was a strongly built little man, who, seeing that he was observed, ran along the branch on which he stood, and jumping from tree to tree with the agility of a monkey, soon disappeared in the depths of the forest.
They had pitched their tent that same afternoon, and Mr. Lloyd had sat down at the tent door with a book in his hand intending to read for a little, when on looking up, he saw a number of little faces peering at him through the thickets in front, and one in particular, which was nearer than the rest, peeping round the trunk of a huge tree that grew right opposite. The boys, who were cooking food for the evening meal, noticed the little people at the same time and sprang up in alarm, for they knew the Pygmies only by report, and thought of them as a kind of devils. For some time the white man and the dwarfs remained motionless, gazing silently at one another in a mutual fascination, though Mr. Lloyd felt all the while that at any moment he might be transfixed with a shower of poisoned arrows from the bows with which the Pygmies were armed. Stanley had characterized them as "malicious dwarfs," and his warlike company had been greatly harassed by them again and again. But at length it occurred to the missionary, still sitting peacefully in his camp-chair, to call out the ordinary salutation of the people of Toro; and when he did so, to his great surprise, one little man immediately returned the greeting in the same language. He then said, "Come here and let us talk together"; and, very shyly, the nearest of the dwarfs crept forwards, followed by a few of the others, half covering his face with his hand and staring through his fingers at the white man in a sort of amazement.
As the Pygmies approached, Mr. Lloyd was struck first of all by their extreme shortness of stature, four feet being the average height of a full-grown man, but next by their exceedingly well-knit figures and powerful limbs. The one who replied to his salutation turned out to be the chief of the party. This man had once come in contact with some people from Toro, and hence knew a little of the Toro language. With him, Mr. Lloyd was able to carry on an imperfect conversation, in which he learned something of the Pygmies and their ways. One of the first things the chief told him was, that for six days he and his people had been following the caravan and keeping it under constant observation. "But we never saw you," the traveler objected. Whereupon the little man laughed with great glee, accepting this as a high compliment to the forest-craft of himself and his followers. During the whole of that time the Pygmies had the caravan entirely in their power; but the very smallness of the company and the evident peacefulness of its intentions had disarmed their suspicions. Mr. Lloyd's experience in the forest, so different from Stanley's, showed that the dwarfs are by no means so "malicious" as that great explorer imagined. And his testimony, like that of Dr. Livingstone or Mr. Joseph Thomson, points to the conclusion that where no warlike demonstrations are made, the African savage of whatsoever tribe is in ordinary circumstances a good-natured fellow, who is ready to give the right hand of fellowship to those who show themselves peaceful and friendly.
With the Pygmies Mr. Lloyd struck up a friendship on the spot. The chief testified to his goodwill by presenting him with an antelope he had just killed, and also with a pot of wild honey, of which great quantities are gathered by these people from the hollows of the trees. That night the two parties encamped in the forest side by side, and they parted next morning on the best of terms, after Mr. Lloyd had made several ineffectual efforts to obtain photographs of the strangers. He found that snapshots were impossible in the forest twilight, while the Pygmies were too restless to submit to time exposures. And so, after spoiling about a dozen plates, he had to give up the idea in despair.
After this, different parties of Pygmies were met with at various times in the further course of the march through the forest, some of whom even brought their women to see the white traveler. The women were comely little creatures, averaging 3 feet 10 inches in height, with light tan-colored skin. Like Stanley, Mr. Lloyd was much struck by the beautiful eyes of the Pygmy women. These are singularly large and lustrous, but so quick and restless that they never seem to fix their gaze upon any object for one second at a time.
The Pygmies are essentially a wandering people. They never think of clearing the ground and cultivating the soil, and are content to wander from place to place, gathering the honey which the bees have stored and the fruit and beans and nuts which grow plentifully on the trees, but above all living on the spoils of the chase. They are fearless and expert hunters, who do not hesitate with their little bows and arrows to attack the largest elephants. Sometimes they have to follow one of these forest monsters for days, and shoot hundreds of arrows into it before it falls down and dies from exhaustion and loss of blood. Then they camp around it and feast upon its flesh day after day. When nothing but the hide and skeleton are left, they seize their weapons once more and go forth in search of another quarry.
Particularly interesting to this traveler were the evidences he discovered of the Pygmy worship. It has sometimes been alleged that these Congo dwarfs have no religion; but Mr. Lloyd had abundant evidence that this was not the case. Sometimes at the foot of a huge tree there might be seen a bundle of food neatly tied up in a piece of bark cloth, or a pot of honey, or a humble offering of forest beans. The Pygmies venerate the Spirit of their forest home, and look upon a giant tree as enshrining that Spirit's presence. And besides their tree shrines Mr. Lloyd came upon temples of their own building— little huts, roughly fenced in from the forest, and hardly better than the tiny shelters of boughs and leaves in which they lie down at night, but holy places in their eyes, because there they deposit the gifts they wish to offer to the invisible Spirit of the woods.
Having successfully struck the river Ituri, the expedition made its way along the banks, and at length issued from the forest at a place called Avakubi, where there was a Belgian station with an officer in command. Here the white traveler was kindly received, and stayed for two days, thoroughly enjoying the comforts of civilized life after all the privations of camp arrangements in the Pygmy Forest. And now it was a comfort to think that though he had still some 1500 miles of African travel to face, no more tramping would be necessary. Fifteen days' paddling in a canoe down the Aruwimi would bring him to the Congo. Reaching that great river, he would connect with a service of steamers running between Stanley Falls and Leopoldville. At the latter place a passage would be secured by another steamer to Boma, at the Congo mouth, and from that place the Belgian mail boat would carry him homewards.
This was a comparatively tame program for one who had just fought his way for weeks through all the dangers and terrors of the Great Forest; and yet the journey, especially in its earlier stages, was full of interest, and not without adventure. More than once the canoe came to grief in shooting the rapids, for African boatmen are not such experts at this kind of work as the North American Indians; and once at least Mr. Lloyd was all but drowned. Moreover, the Aruwimi for a long distance runs through a country in which cannibalism is practiced almost as a fine art by a bold and warlike race known as the Bangwa. More than once on landing at a Bangwa village Mr. Lloyd had to face a trying experience. A crowd of tall savages, each with a cruel-looking knife shaped like a sickle, walked round him, looking him up and down, as if taking stock of his condition and considering whether he was worth killing. The trial was all the more unpleasant that he knew perfectly well how those same execution knives were used. When about to hold a cannibal feast, the Bangwa lead a captive beneath a tree, and bending down a large bough fasten his neck to it. One swish of the keen sickle-knife severs the neck completely, and the bough, springing back to its original position, tosses the poor head with a kind of derision high into the air.
Apart from disagreeable sensations on his own private account, Mr. Lloyd often had to witness scenes which were horrible and sickening. It was a common thing to see a group of men sitting round a fire and eagerly watching the leg of a man that was being roasted, and next falling upon it and devouring it with unconcealed gusto. The visitor found, however, that the cannibalism of the Bangwa was not simply a depraved appetite, but in large part the result of superstition. They firmly believed that the spirit of the dead warrior passes into the body of the man who eats him, so that by partaking of the flesh of his slain foe a man will increase his own strength and courage. It is in keeping with this that a woman is seldom, if ever, eaten by the Bangwa.
The donkey with which Mr. Lloyd started from Toro not only proved to be of no use as a steed, but was a source of infinite trouble through her habit of floundering into swamps and sticking fast in the bush on every possible occasion, and he was glad to sell her on the first opportunity. His little dog Sally, after many exciting adventures and hairbreadth escapes, came to an untimely end in the jaws of a crocodile. But his bicycle, which had been carried safely through the forest in sections, he was now able to put together again, and one day in a large Bangwa community inhabited by some thousands of people he appeared suddenly in the village street pedaling along at the top of his speed. The sensation he produced was enormous. The cannibals rushed about in consternation, knocking each other down in their eagerness to get out of the way, and crying, "The white man is riding on a snake." By and by he dismounted, and calling to the chief, tried to persuade him to come and examine this strange flying creature. But his assurances that it was perfectly harmless were of no avail. The cannibal declined to come any nearer, saying, as he pointed to the long trail left by the wheels on the village street, that be always knew a snake's track when he saw it.
The intrepid traveler reached Boma safely at last, and caught the mail steamer for Europe. He had suffered many hardships, but he had also had not a few experiences that were pleasant-especially in the retrospect. And not the least pleasing of his impressions was the conviction which had grown upon him day by day, whether in the forest of the Pygmies or among the cannibals of the Aruwimi river, that great as was the darkness in which those people lived, they had many fine characteristics of their own, and offered a fresh and splendid field for the messengers of the Christian Gospel.
The rapidity of his march, combined with his complete ignorance of the languages of the Congo region, so different from those of Uganda, made it impossible for Mr. Lloyd to engage during his journey in any kind of Christian work among the natives. But it was a missionary purpose which carried him through the Dark Forest, and that missionary purpose had not been fruitless.
The C.M.S., it is true, has not hitherto felt justified in taking up work among the Pygmies. But Mr. Lloyd may be said to have claimed that strange people for Christ. Stanley had shown that, so far from being on the plane almost of the brute creation, they were a people of a quick intelligence. Mr. Lloyd proved that they were also possessed of religious ideas which offer a foundation for a higher faith and worship than their own. An American missionary traveler, the Rev. Mr. Geil, has followed in Mr. Lloyd's steps by traversing the forest, and has added something further to our knowledge of its very interesting inhabitants. There is every reason to hope that Pygmy-land, like many another part of the Dark Continent, will one day be brought into the Kingdom of Christ.
NOTE.—The book which contains Mr. Lloyd's narrative of his remarkable journey is entitled In Dwarf Land and Cannibal Country, and is published by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin. The present author has to thank Mr. Unwin for his kind permission to make use of Mr. Lloyd's narrative.