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 f '-'lif 
 
 
THE LOOK-OUT HUT 
 On the Cliff overhanging- Lake Mweru. 
 
I 
 
 Thinking Black 
 
 22 YEARS WITHOUT A BREAK IN THE 
 LONG GRASS OF CENTRAL AFRICA 
 
 D. CRAWFORD, F.R.G.S. 
 
 V 
 
 (fConga Vantu) 
 
 C( 
 
 There's a legion that never was listed^ 
 T hat carries no colours nor crest, 
 
 B ut split in a thousand detachments 
 Is breaking the road for the rest.'' 
 
 » :• • >; : '• 
 
 ^econ^ (Bbition ""•■•• "°" " 
 
 MORGAN AND SCOTT LD. 
 
 12, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.G. 
 LONDON MCMXIII 
 
I 
 i 
 
 First Edition . . . 3rd December 1912 ] 
 
 Second Impression . . 19th December 1912 U 
 
 Second Edition . . 30th August 1913 
 
 f 
 
 Copyright by Morgan &^ Scott Ld., igi2 
 
PUBLISHERS' NOTE 
 
 The soon-to-die Livingstone farewelled Stanley in 
 these tragic words : 
 
 " On crossing the Lualaba, I shall go direct 
 S.W. to the copper mines of Katanga. Eight 
 days south of Katanga the natives declare the 
 fountains [of the Nile] to be. When I have 
 found them I shall return by Katanga to the 
 underground houses of Rua . . ; travel in boat 
 up the river Lufira." 
 
 Alas ! the brave " Dawid " never so crossed the 
 Lualaba, and this volume records the fulfilment of 
 Livingstone's last desire. 
 
 Most of it written by the flare of the African camp- 
 fire, the name of this book corresponds with its nature. 
 The author is thinking black all the time he is writing 
 the book so named. 
 
 ^74895 
 
 <y e 
 
I 
 
TO 
 
 the first lady who ever 
 
 penetrated these wilds 
 
 MY WIFE 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 To my friends at Bath and Glasgow for all their 
 loyal help during long years of absence. 
 
 To Mr. Arnot, who so kindly saw us off in Bihe, 
 and regretted his inability to come into the Far 
 Interior. 
 
 To all my friends on the African field, including 
 Dr. Laws of Livingstonia, the true Bishop of Central 
 Africa. 
 
 To Miss Ada R. Habershon for her help in 
 revision and indexing. 
 
 To Mr. Dudley Kidd and Mr. Bernard Taylor for 
 some good photographs. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. First Fears Justified 
 
 II. First Things First . 
 
 III. Far, yet not Farthest, In 
 
 IV. Our African Apprenticeship 
 V. "Boring in" Farther 
 
 VI. Eastward Ho ! 
 
 VII. "Own Up and Pay Up" . 
 
 VIII. Dark Doings in Luvaleland 
 
 IX. The Desert Journey 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 15 
 25 
 
 39 
 63 
 
 91 
 
 109 
 
 129 
 147 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 X. Farthest, but Shut, In 
 XI. Vice Versa . 
 XII. Shut in, but Almost Out . 
 
 XIII. Black Suffragettes 
 
 XIV. Thus Far and no Farther 
 XV. Red Sunsets 
 
 165 
 
 187 
 207 
 227 
 
 255 
 
 283 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 XVI. "Nemesis, Daughter of Night" . 
 XVII. Our Eastern Exodus 
 XVIII. Boring out East . . . 
 
 XIX. Kavanga: The Gates of the Morning 
 XX. "Great White Lake" 
 XXI. A Page of History. 
 XXII. Black Man = Black Manners 
 XXIII. "The Year of Love": An Epilogue 
 L' Envoi .... 
 
 Index .... 
 
 PAGE 
 
 345 
 373 
 
 391 
 
 409 
 
 431 
 
 471 
 
 485 
 
 at end 
 
PHOTOGRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE LOOK-OUT HUT, on tke Cliff overhanging 
 
 Lake Mweru . . (In full colours) Frontispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Typical "Dew-Drier" . . . . .18 
 
 Smoking Indian Hemp , . 
 
 Setting the Supper Trap. Query : A Bird or a Rat ? 
 
 The Eternal Problem, "How to Cross" 
 
 A Typical "Mop" Headdress 
 
 A Typical Soldier's Wife .... 
 
 A Precocious Princeling .... 
 
 Vastness of Africa. Map .... 
 
 A TYPICAL "WIPE OUT" . {In full colours) 174 
 
 One of Mushidi's 500 Wives 
 
 A Learned Lake Mweru Chief 
 
 It's not the Hands that Steal, but the Heart 
 
 A LuBAN Lady ..... 
 
 Bane and Antidote — A Great Snake Specialist . 
 
 ON THE LUALABA . . {In full colours) 320 
 
 Old "Mrs. Hitherto" and Little "Miss Hence- 
 forward" ...... 354 
 
 31 
 58 
 
 75 
 86 
 
 104 
 
 120 
 
 164 
 
 232 
 242 
 244 
 286 
 
 312 
 
xii PHOTOGRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Traveller's Terror ..... 376 
 
 LUANZA, The Mission Town built on the Cliff over- 
 hanging Lake Mweru. . {In full colours) 412 
 
 A Specimen of Town Planning in Africa . . . 446 
 
 Four Thousand Pounds of Beef at 6d. the Lot . 466 
 
THEN and NOW 
 
 " Wanting is — what ? 
 THEN Summer Redundant, 
 
 A.D. 1889 Blueness Abundant, 
 
 Where is the blot?'' 
 
 Peering back through the haze of twenty-three years, 
 behold the retrospect I There goes the West Coast 
 slipping silently past under the port bow, and Africa 
 {niuch-loved, much-blamed Africa) unrolls the panorama 
 of her coast-line in seductive welcome. Only the other 
 day embarking at London with a cold heaven glitteinng 
 overhead like blue steel ; now, here you are zmder the 
 line, where sleepy coast towns lie hidden in the haze of 
 sun. 
 
 Theii comes the landing at Benguella, where the 
 surprises are marvellously many. All your ship-board 
 surmisings, you discover, were easy and ele^nentary 
 error. How little you knew of the African puzzle is 
 seen when it leaks out that the very name {''Africa !") 
 is utterly unknown to the negro, Africa ? He never 
 heard such a hideotcs word. It is a mere tag, a mere 
 ticket stuck on the back of this poor Continent by out- 
 siders. A perfect parable all this of Africa, the land, 
 and the African, the man. A straw indicates the 
 current, and if we know not the name, then we know 
 
xiv THEN AND NOW 
 
 less of the nature of black place and black person, of 
 black man and blacker manners. 
 
 * * ♦ 
 
 Another dawning surpi'ise. No delh'ium of speed 
 here. No catching of tram or train by the fraction of a 
 second. Theiy never was a taxi in all these latitudes, 
 never was anything on ivheels. Fifteen miles per day 
 lies ahead from water to water, from camp to ca7np. 
 Speed ? Now it is you endorse the old definition that 
 speed is only a mad method '' whereby you miss as much 
 as possible between stai^ting-point and destination.'' 
 
 * * * 
 
 Then again. No wayside inn ; no apartments to let. 
 
 You must find your own hut in the woods. Why not ? 
 
 As Thoreau patly puts it, " There is some of the same 
 
 ^ fitness in a man buildi7tg his own house that there is 
 
 in a bird building its own nest.'' 
 
 But worse still. As a slap-in-thefiace S2i7^prise 
 comes the realisation that yott, the newcojuer, are not 
 at your best ; that, in fact, to co7ne to Africa means 
 to come ''down" to Africa. Even before sightifig the 
 African coast, and while still far otit at sea, we sazv 
 the whole coming problem in another panoi^amic parable. 
 This time it is a romantic 7'iver reading 21s a lesson, and 
 by way of warning that the confluence of the Congo 
 might soon be expected, hei'e is our blue Atlantic painted 
 a 77i2Lddy brow7i eight 77iiles out irito the ocean. Pa7'able, 
 su7'ely, of the ugly fact ive are soo7i to prove that evil 
 African comr}tu7iications cori'upt good E^iropean 77ianners. 
 The7^e, in that mo7ister 77iouth of the Co7igo, yaivning 
 seven miles wide, and vo77iiti7ig its di7'ty conte7its into 
 
THEN AND NOW xv 
 
 the blue Atlantic — there, I say, you see the sad and 
 symbolic story of decadence on the West Coast of 
 Africa. For the fearfzil fact must be faced that all 
 things Eu7^opean degenerate in Central Africa — Euro- 
 pean provisions go bad, European fruits, European 
 dogs degenerate. So, too, European 7}ien and wo7nen. 
 
 3«f * * 
 
 And now the wheel C07nes round full 
 INUW circle. Einerging from a long shut-in 
 
 A.U. 1912. iij-g Ij^ ffi^ j7^^ httei^ior, one receives qidte 
 a mefital jolt on striking the first '''tin town'' of ad- 
 vancing civilisation. Where are you ? have you struck 
 the planet Mars ? The long lapse of years makes it 
 all strangely familiar and fa^niliarly strange. One 
 opines one has dreamed all this years and years ago. 
 Can I believe my eyes ? There ^ jutting out of the grass, 
 I see two spokes of iron coming up from the South — my 
 first railway train in twenty-two years ! 
 
 * * ^ 
 
 Then again. Right across Africa, remember, there 
 never was a shop, so here it is, while the human tide pours 
 along, you are all eyes at the seductive shop window of 
 some little local Selfridges, the tin towns tmiversal pro- 
 vider. Fascinated as by a basilisk, you gaze stare-struck 
 at this dream of past years — a shop window / There are 
 crowds of renegade natives from the No7'th down here at 
 the rail- head : poor specimens these, sucked into the whirl- 
 pool of gambling and gin boosing. This is the place 
 where the new arrival fro7n the train can see just enough 
 of the debased type of African to keep him from the 
 desire of seeing more. 
 
xvi THEN AND NOW 
 
 Booming up f7''oin Rhodesia comes the mad Jiorthward 
 surge of invading civilisation. To tise the language of 
 Holland, the dykes are down and the ocean is pouring 
 in on poor Central Africa. Transitional periods are 
 notoriously times of peril. But here is a horrible, hectic- 
 flush crisis which you can only denomiiiate as ** the 
 
 """ terrors of transition!' Carlyle is the only man who 
 expresses the real reason of it all. ''Perfect ignorance,'' 
 
 ^ says he, " is quiet ^ a7id perfect knoivledge is quiet, hit the 
 transition from the former to the latter is a stormy one." 
 As weird as it is wild, here you have the meeting and 
 mixing of widely divergent men and 7nanners, igi2 B.C. 
 coming sharply round the metaphoric corner atid looking 
 igi2 A.D. fill in the funny face. It is all as droll as 
 though a Pharaoh of the Moses period proposed to sit 
 down with a Cockney in a Central African forest and 
 eat sardines together I 
 
 Here at last you have struck the uttermost man in the 
 tUtermost parts of the earth. Uttermost white man, 
 probably, as well as zittermost black, for both races are in 
 the grip of Carlyle s terrors of transition. Life here at 
 the rail-head is a mad medley of natives warped from 
 their primitive simplicity by Eiwopean i^ifluence, and of 
 poor old white men not less profoundly modified by a 
 climate and surroundings to which they were not born. 
 
 ^ JfC ^ 
 
 Yet all the while ones heart is oiU of it and away off 
 North on its own. Up past the Lufira, up past the Range, 
 away up to ones '' ain cotmtrie." 
 
 * * * 
 
 Afar the Golden-Crested Crane is calling ! 
 
BOOK I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 First Fears Justified 
 
\ 
 
 "Mombaza, and Quiloa, and Melind, 
 And Sofala, thought Ophir, to the realm 
 Of Congo, and Angola farthest South." 
 
 Paradise Lost, xi. 399. 
 
 "The African race is an indiarubber ball. The 
 harder you dash it to the ground the higher 
 it will rise." Bantu Proverb. 
 
 "We negroes are one in racial unity with you 
 whites — different yet the same. A crocodile is 
 hatched from an egg — and a flying bird from an 
 
 ^SS' The Emperor Mushidi. 
 
 * 
 
 "The Earth is a beehive: we all enter by the 
 same door but live in different cells." 
 
 Bantu Proverb. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 First Fears Justified 
 
 TyT/" HEREIN the reader^ landing 
 
 at Benguella^ finds himself faced 
 
 with Africa s first and final law — to 
 
 put down a lot one must put up with 
 
 a lot. 
 
 LET us begin at the beginning. Coasting down 
 West Africa the year of grace 1889, the first 
 thing to strike you in the ever-shifting drama is 
 the sarcastic significance of Milton's mention of these lands 
 in such a poem as Paradise Lost, ' ' the Realm of Congo 
 and Angola farthest South." For, as he safely guessed, 
 Paradise is lost, very much lost in these latitudes. There 
 is tropical treachery even in those poor brown palms you 
 see flitting past, for where is defeat so common for a white 
 man as just there on those sands of the seaboard, the air 
 all a-dance with heat ? A taunting palm over a tin shanty, 
 symbol not of victory but disaster. Each and every 
 solar ray giving the exile two knocks : the first, en route 
 to earth, striking the man on its way down, the second 
 getting him again on the rebound from the sparkling 
 
 2 
 
4 THINKING BLACK 
 
 sand. Each day two burning darts per ray — and how 
 many billion rays per day ? 
 
 Take the negro now and watch withal a curious thing. 
 I mean that hard, impersonal stare of these bottomless- 
 eyed natives, not the intense, penetrating thing of Europe. 
 You might be something worked on tapestry or painted 
 on a china cup, so impersonally does he look at you. He 
 even denies you credit for any act of your own personal 
 prowess or initiative, shooting for example. For if, per- 
 chance, you draw a most careful bead on a buck and drop 
 him flat in his tracks, he as carefully sees to it that he 
 allocates the praise between your gun and your imaginary 
 " medicine," fifty per cent apiece, and never, nay never a 
 crumb for you. You are merely the spoiled and petted 
 child of a privileged civilisation — you, what have you 
 done ? Only taken the trouble to be born white a little 
 north of his south — nothing more. " Beyond the sea " is 
 their great adjective for anything newfangled or European, 
 your very Gospel being only another "beyond the sea" 
 innovation. " The white man's parable " is another of 
 their ugly names for our Evangel, a taunt this with the 
 old Ezekiel sting in it : " Ah Lord God ! they say of 
 me, Doth he not speak parables ? " 
 
 But let us end these didactics and come to our 
 chronicle. This is how we really begin. Ignoring the 
 ocean voyage sailed in sameness for hundreds of years, we 
 land on the Atlantic seaboard at Benguella. Portuguese 
 to the core, here you find a tropical town nearly fast 
 asleep in 1889 — asleep, and no wonder. For most of these 
 
FIRST FEARS JUSTIFIED 5 
 
 Portuguese have been boiling in this tropical kettle for 
 many years, with the climatic result that many have a 
 lethargic glaze on their eyes. There is also that curious 
 listless look on his swarthy Latin face suggestive of the 
 well-known contemplative air of a man for whom time 
 and distance are not. Certes, what the average man from 
 the Tagus seems to need is a subcutaneous injection of 
 the busy spirit of John Bull. In moments of extreme 
 exuberance, our sallow friend from Lisbon has been 
 seriously seen to walk, but the average attitude is notori- 
 ously one of repose. The oleaginous collection of messes 
 which they eat from the points of their knives accounts 
 for it all. Rumour runs that he even refuses to drink 
 coffee in the morning lest it should keep him awake the 
 rest of the day. A Portuguese with a long romantic 
 moustache, lolling about on chairs in somewhat unusual 
 attitudes, is the commonest sight in the day. Thus, with 
 sleepy, sun-baked senses, he loses himself in long time- 
 effacing reveries. The American version of it is that he 
 sits as solemnly as though he meant to take root — so you 
 see what slavery has done for the Portuguese. This 
 Western Zanzibar, remember, is the great Portuguese 
 entrepot of slavery, slave labour nearly running the 
 whole concern. And did not the Romans say, " As many 
 slaves, so many enemies " ? 
 
 Scarcely one Portuguese lady in the place. All their 
 colonies have gone shipwreck by defying the foundation 
 truth that wherever duty summons man, woman has a 
 corresponding duty in the same place. Be he Teuton or 
 
v 
 
 6 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Latin, a man ever will be what his mother, wife, or sister 
 makes of him, an influence this that begins at the cradle 
 and ends in the grave. A monthly steamer in these 
 dismal days is the only distraction, and the black plume 
 of smoke on the skyline sends a monthly flutter through 
 the hot hole. But for many a day, alas ! our expected 
 flutter from the Interior does not come, because the 
 transport road is blocked and no advance possible. Thus 
 you see us, here on the threshold of our long and happy 
 life ahead, confronted with a truly typical contretemps so 
 wholly explanatory of many a day to come in the Far 
 Interior. I mean that "blocked road." Now it is the 
 old conventional phrase in England about " your way 
 being opened up " assumes a sacred literal value, for the 
 very narrowness of the trail is itself eloquent of its 
 liability to be easily shut. Knocking as we have done at 
 Central Africa's back door of Benguella, have we not found 
 the said door locked ? The native carrier trade is in a 
 state of stagnation, and the God Who shutteth and no 
 man openeth thereby challenges us with this loving Qui 
 va laf 
 
 Unlike the voyage inland from the malarial mouth of 
 the Congo farther North ; unlike the long winding crawl 
 from Chinde up the Zambezi on the East Coast, here at 
 Benguella you find Africa doing a fine thing in rising 
 almost sheer from the sea. The hills stand out in jet 
 black silhouette from the humid coast, and in a few hours, 
 if the natives would only fall in with Nature's idea, you 
 could be over the mountain wall and well on your way to 
 
FIRST FEARS JUSTIFIED 7 
 
 the breezy uplands of Bilie. But Mr. Negro looks on 
 with ineffable complacency, and refuses to league with 
 Nature in favour of outsiders. At this early stage he 
 knows little and cares less for Mr. Missionary ; what he 
 does seem sure about is that the sun rises and sets for 
 No. 1 alone. Yet let us give him his due. Unlike the 
 Saxons, Danes, and Jutes who were invited by the ancient 
 Britons to enter England, here you have the black-but- 
 comely African honestly warning you off both his soil 
 and his soul. Frankly saying in so many looks if not so 
 many words that he would rather have your room than 
 your company. Why should he scrape and bow to 
 persons with no more fingers and toes than he has 
 himself ? 
 
 A new land, however, really means a new vocabulary, 
 and here with this mention of "road" in Africa we must 
 pause to define our terms. The substantive "road" pre- 
 sents its compliments to the English-speaking public and 
 hereby notifies a new aspect of its dictionary meaning. 
 For just as you throw away your Bradshaw when you 
 leave the land of trains, so neither Webster nor Nuttall 
 can tell you what an African "road" is. Though it is 
 the true trunk road to the vast Interior, yet the real 
 name for this thing is a " trail," literally a trivial trail the 
 size of a cart-wheel rut. And so it comes about that here 
 at the Benguella doorway you get your initial surprise 
 that this Africa for thousands of twisty miles ahead is a 
 land wholly innocent of roads, and boasts only this cart- 
 wheel rut as a highway. " Goat-walks " is the real idea. 
 
8 THINKING BLACK 
 
 those sheep-tracks found across the Welsh mountains. 
 Described at greater length anon, here at the outset it is 
 absolutely necessary to point out how in this serpentine 
 path we have the strategic key to the citadel of the black 
 brain. " Thinking black " this, verily. It is the African's 
 way of doing things as well as his way of walking, and 
 mentally Mr. Negro spends life carving out for himself a 
 theory that will fit the facts of this corkscrew path. Take, 
 for instance, the necessary monotonous Indian file this 
 same narrow trail of ours involves : there is a whole 
 negro philosophy of "follow your leader" meaning in 
 this. For as we saw, see, and shall see, the negro's " way " 
 of doing a thing is merely to do it as the man who went 
 before him did it. The slaves of precedent, they dog the 
 steps of a thousand ancestors, and such is the tenacity of 
 the negro type that to this day their whole outfit of the 
 twentieth century a.d. can be found perfectly reproduced 
 on Egyptian monuments of the same century B.C. Hence 
 the Bantu song : — 
 
 " A well-worn trail is a very good thing, 
 It must lead up to a very great King; 
 And so with customs of days of yore, 
 We do what millions have done before." 
 
 \ That is to say, precedent, not principle, is their black 
 law. And any African dictionary tells the whole tale, for 
 around this germinal word "path" there constellate a 
 dozen ideas like law, prohibition, transgression, plan, etc. 
 Thus glorying in this long Indian trail of antiquity, 
 the Bantu tribes boast the identical Egyptian kilt, mortar, 
 
FIRST FEARS JUSTIFIED 9 
 
 pestle, and cooking ware of the Moses period. Nor need 
 we wonder at all this, for is not Egypt the door of Africa ? 
 Moral: A thousand years are as one day in African 
 manners. Time may laugh at the Pyramids, but the 
 Pyramids laugh at time. 
 
 Beware, too, of those shags j utting out along that trail — 
 shags metaphoric, I mean, as well as shags material. There 
 is the upstart Rob Roy ahead blocking the way with his 
 " money or your life " ultimatum ; an ugly shag he. 
 There are those sons of Belial, the Luvale bandits, who 
 hold you up for days ai*i go into committee on the subject 
 of your ransom ; uglier shags they. " Gentlemen of the 
 road " these, who egg you on to sell your soul by bullying 
 *and bouncing them. Would admire you immensely (you, 
 a Missionary of the Prince of Peace) if all the while your 
 index finger curved itself around the trigger of a persuasive 
 six-shooter. Finally, there is the great Mushidi himself 
 at the end of it all, half-way across Africa, blocking this 
 trans-continental trail and making it a blind alley. You 
 have Dr. Moloney's authority for it that in later days, 
 when Captain Stairs found us imprisoned at Bunkeya, 
 Mushidi called us his " white slaves." 
 
 But among the many intricacies of this " cobweb path " 
 the great system of Nkole — the Luban word, this — makes 
 you gasp at its ramifications. Here you have a thing 
 spreading from sea to sea, and in this mad manoeuvre you 
 focus the real reason of all their troubles. For what is 
 Nkole but only a " catch-your-pal " movement, a snatch 
 suretyship when a harmless third party is kidnapped and 
 
10 THINKING BLACK 
 
 kept in durance vile for the sins of some unknown second 
 party ? No wonder the African roads are all blocked 
 intertriballj. Here is harmless Jones coming along the 
 trail, and they pounce on him as surety for the crime of 
 some unknown John Smith, the theory being that Jones, 
 one bright day, will retaliate and swoop down on Smith, 
 claiming damages for illegal seizure. Now try and con- 
 ceive what a tangle of triangles this makes all over the 
 land, for in a thousand cases the stranger-surety A. never 
 saw in the flesh the conjectural culprit B. But what is 
 that to C. the kidnapper ? Is not this his only way of 
 setting the clumsy legal mill in motion ? Moral : He 
 that is surety for a stranger must smart for it. Take 
 even your best type of negro and try and argue some 
 sense into him on this cobweb system of native paths and 
 he shows not a twinge of penitence. No ; unwarped and 
 unbiased as he looks, this Nkole idea he defends as a 
 time-honoured maxim, the treacherous triangle of the 
 thing being its best point — yea, is it not a triangle, and 
 therefore all point together ? 
 
 But it is generally the Missionary who has got to pay. 
 Even in later days this Bantu bed-rock idea still clings to 
 the semi-educated African. Listen to another Nhole tale, 
 with quite a touch of terror in it, a noble white man the 
 victim ; the author of it all only a negro body smarting 
 under a sense of personal wrong. The scene is out East 
 in more civilised conditions. Maltreated by a brother 
 black, this man is exasperated to find that his enemy 
 is too strong for him ; has a sort of aristocratic status, 
 
FIRST FEARS JUSTIFIED 11 
 
 that is to say, "an untouchable," and therefore out 
 of reach. 
 
 Query No. 1 : How can this nobody get his rights 
 without committing some wrongs ? 
 
 Query No. 2 : How can a man have wrongs if he has 
 no rights ? 
 
 And thus with much fertility of brain he concocts a 
 fantastic tragedy with this old bugbear, Nkole, as germinal 
 notion. Laying his plans with consummate care, he 
 singles out the house of a harmless Missionary, and this 
 goaded black resolves to burn it down, the "surety" idea 
 being that he has now brought matters to a head by 
 dragging into the wrangle a mightier than his mighty foe. 
 And, sure enough, a terrible triangle he makes of it all, 
 for up goes the godly man's house in a blaze, thus ensur- 
 ing an opening up of the whole question. Little did that 
 poor bush black guess how he honoured that Missionary, 
 for, like his Master, was he not made surety for the 
 stranger and did he not smart for it ? But the darkest 
 deed is yet to come. This black stoic knows far too well 
 what manner of act he has done, so with superior sagacity 
 he resolves " to leave life by the back door " — to commit 
 suicide. Quite calmly, therefore, he scratches a note on a 
 bit of paper explaining his "terrible triangle" plan and 
 then hangs himself on his own club down a game pit. Of 
 course, at this useless point there is much ex post facto 
 hurry-scurry, but all too late, for the real culprit's debt 
 has been paid in blood and fire. A lesson this how 
 deeply the roots of suretyship shoot down into the bone 
 
12 THINKING BLACK 
 
 and marrow of Africa. Need I go on ? There are 
 thousands of such cases. 
 
 This is "thinkinoj black" with a vengreance, and as 
 usual the scapegoat Missionary has got to pay somebody 
 else's debt. Far from this being effete, only the other day 
 one of our caravans bound for Kavungu was plundered of 
 nine loads by the Achokwe, and all on this Nkole plea. 
 The great Portuguese Senhor (by name " Visese," a ruffian 
 endowed with more brains than scruples) had carried West 
 hundreds of captives, hence these patriots grabbing at 
 the first harmless nobody's goods in retaliation. Of daily 
 intertribal occurrence this : take another instance. 
 
 Here, as I write, is Kaveke, a Luban, who runs in and 
 tells me with quick-breathed rapidity that four of his 
 relatives have been seized as Nkole or surety, and the 
 man of the party killed, head cut off — well-known Jones 
 killed for unknown Smith. But that Nkole story is not 
 ended ; for when their father was so killed, his daughters 
 were enslaved and the two nice-looking girls made chiefs 
 concubines. Let us call Ngoi the sort of Martha of the 
 story and Mujikle the Mary. Well, this latter, alas ! had 
 scarcely entered bondage when her brute of a master died, 
 and Mary, a mere slip of a girl, is now told that she must 
 be buried alive with her father's own murderer. So Mary 
 has died like hundreds more, the only sop she got being a 
 farewell supper of meat and mush — a sort of black bribe 
 this, equivalent to the English : " If you are a good little 
 girl you'll get jam with your tea." The escaped Martha 
 is now with us at the Mission, and poor Mary, pulsating 
 
FIRST FEARS JUSTIFIED 13 
 
 with buoyant life, was buried alive. Not a dying yell, 
 remember, but only a great dry sob. Africa ! 
 
 But it were impossible to tell all. One cry there is, 
 thougfh, so uniform the words that it almost amounts to a 
 horrible technical term. Reminiscent of the Epistle to 
 the Romans as it is, you cannot resist the steady convic- 
 tion that Paul must have known it too. Take, roughly, 
 a dozen such cases known to me — I mean, the living 
 forced to embrace the mortifying corpse. The terrible 
 formula of their cry was just Romans vii. 24 over again : 
 " Who shall deliver me from this body of death ? " No 
 negro could ever read Paul's anti-sin moan in Romans 
 without a special shudder at that metaphor : well he 
 knows what it means, for often did he hear that cry. 
 And long may he shudder at sin, say I. 
 
 W TV* 
 
 But nobody knows his Africa who is not on terms of 
 intimacy with the fire-flies. Darting about bewilderingly, 
 they flash their intermittent signals into the night, and 
 \ eight or ten confined in a phial give sufficient light to 
 enable one to write. At sundown behold a parable of 
 your Missionary tribulation ahead, the fourth plague of 
 Egypt. For no sooner do you light up than the thousand 
 tribes of local gnats, flies, and moths mobilise to fight 
 the flickering flame, each enunciating with impertinent 
 emphasis the dictum that the fly or the flicker must snufi" 
 out. Children of night as they are, you can see them 
 swarm round that candle in clouds — war-cry : We love 
 darkness rather than light, because our deeds are evil. 
 
14 THINKING BLACK 
 
 But the faithful flame flickers od, an apostle of light, true 
 "thinking black" parable of the Devil's battalions trying 
 to snufl" the little lights of testimony twinkling across 
 Africa. Far-fetched metaphor though this looks, yet can 
 we place it under the sure shelter of high authority. For 
 did not Faraday long ago begin his famous lecture by 
 declaring " there is not a law under which any part of this 
 universe is governed that does not come into play in the 
 phenomena of the chemical history of a candle " ? Not 
 that these millions of midges haven't a method in their 
 madness. Hidden for their lives by day in the marsh, full 
 well they know that the scorching sun would devour them 
 if they emerged, war to the death being proclaimed 
 between solar light and these broods of darkness. What 
 wonder, then, at this their revenge on the poor candle, a 
 diminutive disciple of the sun spluttering in the night, 
 their vindictive swoop eloquent of the anti-light malice. 
 This certainly is the native's notion, for in his alliterative 
 language he makes a linear pun of it — calling the lamp the 
 " Sun's little Sonny," the prefixes rhyming as in English. 
 This is digression, though, and we must get on with 
 our story — but that means another chapter. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 First Things First 
 
i 
 
 "Sorrov/ and the scarlet leaf, 
 
 Sad thoughts and sunny weather ; 
 Ah me! this glory and this grief 
 Agree not well together." 
 
 * 
 
 " Though ye have lien among the pots, yet shall ye 
 be as the wings of a dove covered with silver, and 
 her feathers with yellow gold. . . . Ethiopia shall 
 soon stretch out her hands unto God." 
 
 Psalm Ixviii. 13, 31- 
 
 "There is a depth below the depth, 
 And a height above the height : 
 Our hearing is not hearing. 
 And our seeing is not sight." 
 
 16 
 
CHAPTER II 
 First Things First 
 
 TT7' HEREIN the reader, finding no 
 advance possible, ponders and 
 probes Africa's great problem of " the 
 blocked road.'' 
 
 SUCH, then, is our ridiculous " road " over the hills, 
 and lest peradventure we take too much for granted, 
 I suppose I should explain that this caravan of ours 
 is not by any manner of means an English four-wheeler of 
 the gipsy sort. Really a twisting, travelling town it is, 
 and there you see more than a hundred men, women, and 
 boys wriggHng along through the tall grass in Indian 
 file — the "crocodile" our negro facetiously calls it. A 
 curious hotch-potch of humanity, here you have the small 
 tradesman and the dancing man, the musician and the 
 doctor ; these and many more all twisting in and out 
 with the trail in faithful " follow your leader " fashion. 
 This doctor fellow while drawing his rations as carrier has 
 also the perquisites of his profession among his brother- 
 blacks, the dancing man likewise reckoning that he can in 
 a spare hour "hand round the hat" for a consideration. 
 The witchery of this man's tongue is wonderful, for he 
 
 17 
 
18 THINKING BLACK 
 
 wheedles round the negro on his soft sing-song side, plays 
 his own accompaniment, and has a rich repertory of all 
 the tribal reels, strathspeys, and laments. Often over- 
 grown with thick grass, the trail is lost below it, and the 
 terror o' mornings is to squeeze your way through this wet, 
 matted tangle. The drier the season, of course, the greater 
 the deluge of dew, and all to be negotiated in the cold, 
 callous dawn. Often, too, you get out of your blankets 
 only to discover that another thick blanket of mist lies 
 across your path, the cheerless sun looking through the 
 fog like a snowball. Real malarial mist, pale with 
 the awful pallor of death, and no wonder one prefers 
 the famous pea-soup fog of London. 
 
 But the weakest go to the wall in all this, and your 
 big black carriers push on the shivering youngsters ahead 
 to dry off the clammy dew on their bodies. " Human 
 brooms," they are called. Take your stand against an 
 intolerant tradition of this " dew wiping " sort and you 
 will be worsted, for they argue that such is the tribal 
 mill, and had they not all to go through it ? So here you 
 have a literal case in which " a little child shall lead them," 
 mere babies driven on first to brush off the dew.^ 
 
 Have you caught the idea ? No Factory Acts here. 
 Mere babies goaded on ahead for the drenching dew 
 of this 13-feet-high grass to pour down on them spray- 
 
 ^ By a conceit of etymology the word " pioneer " is coined from this very 
 idea of such an one being a " human broom " or " dew drier," and a fair 
 Englisli equivalent is to call a Burton or a Livingstone "Mr. Waterproof," 
 because he braved the inclement days of pioneering and got drenched that 
 we might go dry. 
 
a 9 • » . • . 
 
 A TYPICAL DEW-DRIER. 
 
FIRST THINGS FIRST 19 
 
 bath fashion. This grass, of course, is so dense that it 
 hides the tiny trail, so each step is a squeeze forward into 
 the unknown, the said squeeze being equivalent to the 
 turning on of the tap on our little 3 6-inch -long nobodies. 
 But there is a law of compensation even here. Oh yes, 
 these nobodies become somebodies with their resultant 
 revenge. I saw one such diminutive "dew drier" go 
 straight up to mamma and let her have a sounding smack 
 in the face. Angry ? Not she. Dissolving in smiles, 
 she looks at her offspring proudly : " What a splendid 
 warrior he'll make ! " Pushed on ahead in the dark dawn, 
 of course, these little bits of black humanity run the 
 chance of a hungry old hyena or leopard lurking by the way 
 to nab first comers. Too well are they aware that even 
 the smallest contributions are always thankfully received 
 by the Carnivora. And thus is evolved Africa's enfant 
 terrible, the sad stuff, forsooth, out of which Mr. 
 Missionary has got to build the poor little African Sunday 
 school. Ragged schools, one might indulgently call them, 
 only the problem is to produce even one rag sometimes. 
 
 But all this is to anticipate, for it is easier to talk 
 about the trail than to use it, and we are forced to settle 
 ourselves down on the sickly seaboard like a man in a 
 railway station condemned to wait the next train. Heigh 
 ho ! here it is you learn that patience must be your pet 
 African virtue, and here, too, you first face the dangerous 
 yet delightful fact that you are wholly in the negro's 
 hands for weal or woe. For if those expected carriers of 
 ours don't come out of the hills one of these days and 
 
20 THINKING BLACK 
 
 pick us up, we cannot budge, a rueful reflection this, quite 
 a wholesome corrective to British bluff and swagger. So 
 here on the baking Benguella sands we pass the long 
 electric nights longing for the climbing of the great 
 " African Divide." That straight, shy glance we con- 
 stantly cast at the brown girding hills is full of desiring 
 with great desire to pass on and into the Far Interior. 
 We long for the uplands and brisk breezes that will blow 
 new ideas into the brain. Only to get a start, only to 
 get on our legs, this is the sole African solution of 
 stagnation. Solvitur ambulando was the cunning little 
 Latin maxim of the thing, and the Luban has the exactly 
 equivalent epigram: "It is settled in walking." Days 
 grow into weeks and still another red sunrise with no 
 carriers to hand ; only that solemn booming of the great 
 Ocean on the sun-smitten sands. In these dreary days 
 Browning (!) in three luminous lines supplies the diary 
 data for as many months : — 
 
 "The sun looked over the mountain's rim, 
 And straight was a path of gold for him, 
 But the need of a world of men for me." 
 
 Thus you see how the African scores such an easy first 
 in his own land. Even this vaunted pioneering of ours 
 he looks down upon in a most amused and patronising 
 manner. Not that this ox-eyed black is lacking in many 
 a word of cheer when you are jaded with the journey ; 
 indeed, he rallies you with the cheering reminder : 
 ** Hurrah : the first along the dew-damp path in the 
 morning {i.e. the pioneer) dries off on his own body the 
 
FIRST THINGS FIRST 21 
 
 wet grass, for the benefit of those who follow him." A 
 perfect parable this of grand old Livingstone staggering 
 down South to his Ilala grave, for did he not endure all 
 his discomforts that the men following might reap a 
 harvest of travelling tranquillity ? Hence the negro song, 
 dedicated to all pioneers, which I translate thus — 
 
 " Lead thou the way in the wet grass drear. 
 Then, only then, art thou pioneer : 
 For Mr. First must get all the woes, 
 That Mr. Second may find repose." 
 
 Called technically "The Path-Borer," a pioneer of the 
 old school is almost canonised by the negro, and all who 
 follow in his wake are his younger brothers. Even to 
 this remote day, all around Lake Mweru they sing a 
 "Livingstone" song to commemorate that great "path- 
 borer," the good Doctor being such a federal head of his 
 race that he is known far and near as Ingeresa, or "The 
 Englishman." And this is his memorial song — 
 
 " Ingeresa who slept on the waves {Lola pa Mava), 
 Welcome him, for he hath no toes ! 
 Welcome him, for he hath no toes ! " 
 
 That is to say, revelling in paradox as the negro does, 
 he seized on the facetious fact that this wandering Living- 
 stone, albeit he travelled so far, had no toes, i.e. had 
 boots, if you please ! 
 
 And as Livingstone, so yourself Here it is, sitting in 
 the penumbra of the camp fire, you hear much ambiguous 
 whispering, the changes all rung on one wonderful word 
 
 they have coined — your new African name, nothing less. 
 3 
 
22 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Often only a much modified adaptation of the old one ; 
 oftener still a nasty nickname for a nastier man, this 
 awful Africa, so unlike Heaven from sea to sea, impudently 
 lays down the laughable law that you must have a new 
 name in this land. The spade is at last called a spade. 
 Without a pang of pity they rob you of your old 
 patronymic, all the Europeans in Africa, like a band of 
 burglars, being hidden behind the mask of an alias. 
 Sorry to suggest, this just suits many of the rifi'-rafF, for 
 as nobody is shy at a masked ball, many a Portuguese 
 under the mask of a nom de guerre raided Lubaland, his 
 identity lost in a nickname. Again and again have I 
 been baffled in tracking such murderers, all the fearful 
 facts genuine, but minus the necessary name. So you 
 give it up — fooled, fighting a phantom ! Not one new 
 name, mind you, but many ; for the bigger the criminal 
 the longer the list of aliases. 
 
 Mr. Negro, too, like the changing town-names in a 
 Map of Africa, is quite as bad. The changing man has 
 changing names. Here is a lad at my elbow with a pen- 
 sive air ; wants an advance of pay, he says, to buy a trifle 
 — to buy a name, be it known. This means that a name 
 is a serious part of moveable estate and is as much legal 
 property as his gun or dog : witness, this youngster 
 proposing to go shares with another man's name, a:nd 
 solemnly buying it for £ s. d. And unconsciously 
 quotes Scripture in the translation : " A good name," says 
 he, " is better than riches ! " So he pays the price and 
 gives the riches for a good name. Of course, he has one 
 
FIRST THINGS FIRST 23 
 
 already, but opines that Ms birth-name is too juvenile ; 
 was it not given him without his permission and therefore 
 purely conjectural ? Should not a name be an appro- 
 priate photo of his character ? He alone knows that 
 name. So he argues and so he acts, and this is the 
 reason why the question of native names becomes a 
 perplexity, a hate, and an amazement. For as the ins 
 and outs of his life go like his river in twists and turns, 
 even so each new aspect of life means a new name. In 
 this respect the long sinuous Congo has the same history 
 as a Congo native, a dozen new names for the dozen new 
 twists down stream. A mere Smith or Brown cannot 
 exist in these lands, for there is the real article, a Mr. 
 Smith really worth the name for he works in iron, and 
 an equally real Mr. Brown as brown as a berry. No 
 wonder, when you tell the African that in Heaven we 
 shall have a new nature, his rejoinder is, "Then we 
 must get a new name." New nature equates new name. 
 
 But the worst part of this Benguella story is yet to 
 come. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 Far, yet not Farthest, In 
 
\ "Atticus! . . . the stupidest and ugliest slaves 
 
 come from Britain." Cicero. 
 
 " I'm king to-day," said the dying slave to the king 
 who killed him. 
 
 "Here in Lubaland a goat costs four yards of 
 calico, and a woman-slave is also sold for four yards, 
 
 er^O a goat - a woman." Kavovo (Luban chief). 
 
 t6 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Far, yet not Farthest, in 
 
 J yf/' HEREIN the reader is invited to 
 
 call a spade a spade^ and return 
 
 a true bill against Portuguese slavery^ the 
 
 black ivory being proved to carry the 
 
 white ivory out to the Atlantic. 
 
 FOR here, in this trail debouching on the seashore 
 from the Catumbella Hills, you have the most 
 famous slave track in Africa — yes ! And all 
 persistently passing under the nose of high constituted 
 authority, remember. His Excellency the Governor is 
 there in Benguella, while beyond that dignitary, away 
 far out at sea, an occasional curl of blue smoke indicates a 
 passing British cruiser. The port-holes look exactly like 
 the clenched teeth of a bull -dog longing to bite the 
 Portuguese slaver. Yet the confusion and degradation of 
 thought is such that for more than a century there has 
 been a tacit conspiracy to wink at it all. But the God 
 Who has cursed the man who winketh with the eye is not 
 indeed mocked, and " Cursed Catumbella " is the awful 
 alliteration of this sad story. For if inter-negro slavery 
 
 27 
 
28 THINKING BLACK 
 
 be a bad black thing, then a fortiori white versus black 
 slavery is worse. But if high constituted authority winks 
 at it all, then, a fortissimo, cursed is the said Govern- 
 ment that winketh with the eye. 
 
 As far as can be done in cold print let me say what I 
 saw. My date is in August, the location a forest in 
 which Latitude 12° South is intersected by Longitude 21° 
 East. Who could ever forget the nightmare of this 
 monster slave caravan we meet in the Chokwe country ? 
 Flying as we both are in opposite directions through the 
 hungry country, you are bewildered and exasperated to 
 see this staggering mass of captive humanity heading for 
 the West Coast. Through desolate marshy lands have 
 they come ; across the burning sands of the Kifumadzi 
 flat have they dragged : Lunda and Luvale lands are now 
 passed, but the Ocean is still a weary way off. Already 
 months on the road, hunger is gnawing at the vitals of 
 the whole cruel caravan, and dozens of hectoring brutes 
 are clubbing on their " moving money " {olomhongo) 
 from behind. The coldest-blooded creature south of the 
 Arctic circle could not contemplate that via dolorosa 
 without revolt, for here is the " open sore " streaming 
 with life's blood before your eyes. Spring expostulat- 
 ingly on one of these obese and orthodox slavers in the 
 forest and he tells you with alacrity that the Portuguese 
 buy them all up. Yea, further, with engaging frankness 
 this brutal black gives you the name and address of 
 reputable merchants in Benguella and Catumbella who 
 snap up as much black ivory as possible : are they not 
 
FAR, YET NOT FARTHEST, IN 29 
 
 going to ship them over to San Thome for the cultivation 
 of cocoa ? 
 
 Look, then, at this caravan, taking nearly three hours 
 to march past, a horde of eight hundred souls, all doomed 
 to exile for life. Some tottering old men there, mere 
 shrivelled sacks of bones who at any moment may 
 need to lie down by the roadside and die. Dozens of 
 women there, staggering along with little babies born 
 and unborn, for this famished " hungry country " demands 
 a rushing speed for the caravan. Item : One mother, 
 the grief-lines furrowing her face, goaded on with baby 
 just born that day by the roadside, maternity conval- 
 escence, say, one hour and a fraction. Saddest sight of 
 all, crowds of little emaciated boys and girls all sold for 
 a song in the Congo State, the little legs at last giving out. 
 Yet only four months before every one of them had 
 radiant youth bubbling in his veins. Who can forget 
 that, Lubans born and bred as they are, these same little 
 souls sing a song in their own country about the joys of 
 a jaded piccaninny on the trail when nearing home at 
 
 last ? 
 
 " If toiling on a journey dreary 
 
 A little toddling child is weary. 
 
 One whisper of the magic ' Home,' 
 
 How strong the little legs become ! 
 
 No longer weariness they feel, 
 
 For they are stiff like bars of steel." 
 
 But here they are, far from home, that long wriggling 
 horror of a slave track before and behind them, so thin 
 and hollow-eyed you can only think of them as a moan 
 
30 THINKING BLACK 
 
 materialised into flesh. Heading for the slave-pen at 
 Benguella there is no such magic word " Home " to stiffen 
 their back in resolve to reach it. One of these girls had 
 fallen behind, strength gone, load of rubber thrown on 
 the ground, so, emerging from the bush, I was just in time 
 to see her owner club her head, yelling out a threat with 
 each stroke. This was more than I could stand, and as 
 Christ saw nothing worse than that among the Temple 
 dove-sellers I sprang at this burly Bihean with a stick to 
 administer unto him a not undeserved trouncing — but of 
 course he showed a clean pair of heels. One tiny girl I 
 redeemed from a dark death by the roadside, a girl who 
 is now a happy Christian mother on Lake Mweru. 
 
 Item: Literally sold for a song was one such little 
 boy whose name became Sikispence, his market value one 
 coloured handkerchief at 6d. 
 
 Item: A native named "Truss of calico" bought one 
 youngster for Is. 4d. ; a cheap chattel this, stolen while 
 mother was off in the field. 
 
 Item: Dilunga's child, too, was sold for an old water- 
 proof coat. 
 
 Item : Ndala was a boy who fetched, as market price, 
 a small bag of corn. 
 
 Item: Musole and her child were also sold for grain, 
 two small bags for two human beings. " Man eats corn, 
 but corn can eat man," their proverb runs. 
 
 Proof positive ? Here is a blunt fellow who has done 
 the thing for years, no Portuguese he. Quite a prodigy of 
 obesity for the climate, he has bought and sold many a 
 
' ' ' > ' 1 
 
 SMOKING INDIAN HEMP^ 
 
'I t- c 
 
 i 
 
FAR, YET NOT FARTHEST, IN 31 
 
 slave. In his ample mouth there is an ample pipe, and 
 between the puffs he boasts of his slave- trading ; two 
 slaves for one rifle, is an instance. Committing himself, 
 as he did, to an lOU for the accessory cartridges, here 
 you have frank fact and no fiction. Daring to marry in 
 after years, this union was so degrading that when he 
 died, his widow, on the 18th of April 1907, sold off seven 
 slaves, two going to Snr. "Katavola" — to give the name 
 of place for persons. This Senhor, of course, offered good 
 prices for some girls she had. Figures are not at all 
 difficult to get at, for often a blunt question receives as 
 blunt an answer, this especially with the " old timer," a 
 high-and-dry Tory. A slaver by principle as well as 
 practice, he does not believe in exposing too much of 
 the white of the eyes on this subject of slavery. With 
 Dickens' policeman he believes that " words is bosh," and 
 the polite modern " servigaes " is too fancy a word for 
 him. Asked point-blank to give the percentage of slave 
 mortality en route to ocean, this out-and-outer makes a 
 careful calculation of the losses. Far from parrying such 
 a preposterously pointed question, " Well," says he, " they 
 vary a good deal ; from some districts they are hardier 
 than from others. If we are lucky we may get six out 
 of every ten alive to Bihe, and ij unlucky, perhaps only 
 three out often." 
 
 The first draft of the programme for our route ahead 
 is very simple. Two hundred miles inland is our first 
 stage to the kingdom of Bihe, and our roaming Bihean 
 is the man who holds the key to the Far Interior. The 
 
32 THINKING BLACK 
 
 accurate African analogy is found in thinking of Benguella 
 as the sort of Western Zanzibar, and busy transport Bihe 
 as the Unyanyembe of these latitudes. This Bihean, 
 though, scores off his Eastern brother in having more 
 commercial initiative, whereas in the prowess of war — 
 " clash of arms " they call it — the poor Bihean is as 
 famous a "woman in war" (sic) as the Arab Rugaruga 
 is a historic horror. The very grammar of the story tells 
 this tale, for the proper noun " Rugaruga " became 
 ultimately the proper verb (and improper, alas !) meaning 
 " to murder and loot," all around Lake Mweru. Both of 
 them professional slavers, the Bihean in the West found 
 himself in the grip of a much more keen economic process 
 than the Munyamwesi man out East. For unlike the 
 Bihean's Portuguese master, the fastidious and aggressive 
 Arab kept commerce in his own hands, disdaining a 
 delegate. On the other hand, the lethargic Portuguese 
 threw all the initiative on the bold Bihean, of course 
 throwing at him at the same time a few hundred pounds' 
 worth of guns, powder, and calico. The black factotum 
 thus armed with a curious power of attorney in the form 
 of a huge Portuguese flag disappeared " over the hills and 
 far away" for a nine months' pacific (!) penetration of 
 the Interior. No sedentary Portuguese, as a rule, even 
 followed him to ask nasty questions, and if the man from 
 Lisboa ever had any curiosity about the Interior it very 
 seldom seemed to have crystallised into active exploration 
 — Silva Porto of Belmonte the great exception. Thus it 
 came to pass that in a quarter of a century the Bihean 
 
PAR, YET NOT FARTHEST, IN 33 
 
 legend spread far over the Interior, and in the solemn 
 matter of slavery these " black Portuguese " became the 
 great knights of industry in the land. Even when a 
 young boy Bihean really finds his legs, off he is drafted 
 East, across the Kwanza River, to be trained like a young 
 bull-dog to show his teeth at the slaves. At six years of 
 age the busy little commercial brain of Master Bihean has 
 long ago learned the market prices of human flesh and 
 blood, man-slave, woman-slave, child-slave, and baby-slave 
 all assorted and ticketed in his head. 
 
 At glad last — and thanks to kind Mr. Woodside — we 
 climb out of that loathsome littoral one lovely evening in 
 July. Casting a last long look at the Western Atlantic 
 disappearing in strange apocalyptic glow among the 
 Catumbella Hills, ours it is to take the first faltering 
 step on our way. Not again shall we sight the salt sea 
 until one remote day the wide continent is crossed and 
 the Indian Ocean flashes into view at Chinde. The 
 "boring" of Africa is the native's technical term for this 
 crossino; from sea to sea. Workinsf out to the sea after 
 being shut in to the long grass of the Interior for nearly 
 twenty years, the first snifl" of the Ocean ozone dilates 
 the nostrils with the subtlest of all human joy — the 
 prickly breath of the salt sea driving deep down into 
 the panting lungs. Louder than the thousand Greeks 
 of Xenophou you can utter the long-pent-up shout, 
 " Thalatta ! Thalatta ! " on sighting the great green sea — 
 
 " The sea ! the sea ! the open sea ! 
 The blue, the fresh, the ever free ! " 
 
34 THINKING BLACK 
 
 The climb up to Bihe is the first stage of our long 
 journey, and the three opening days see us covering a 
 curious switchback arrangement in mountains, the Ekonga 
 and Kanyon presenting the worst difficulties. Probably 
 a section view of the former might show eight rude 
 angles of nearly 70°, and until the ridge of Mount Elonga 
 is gained on the seventh day and an altitude of 5000 feet 
 reached, it is persistent ascent all the time, the chill tonic 
 mountain air biting the cheek. We cross, too, numberless 
 little perennial streams spanned by bridges, both creaking 
 and rickety, and only two rivers of any magnitude — the 
 Bailombo and Keve. The Bailombo, the size of an 
 English trout-stream, is fairly fordable ; the Keve, a deep 
 rapid thing, you must negotiate in a leaky little bark 
 boat (coracle, rather) — one man, one voyage. You feel as 
 safe as if you had put to sea in a washtub, and about as 
 dry. But to have a lively sense of the saving humour of 
 things is one thing, and to indulge that same sense half- 
 way across this washtub voyage is quite another. You 
 recall the old saying that "a sailor has never got home 
 till he has had his dinner," and a slip between this cup 
 of a canoe and that lip of a river bank is a daily, deadly 
 occurrence. If ever there was nothing in a name, here 
 you have it in this bark bundle called a boat. Too truly 
 you embark. That bright red shell cracked all over and 
 puttied with mud proclaims this to be her maiden voyage, 
 so be sure of it the whole situation is abounding in 
 ludicrous possibilities. Squeezing into the thing, you 
 wonder desolately where your negro paddler can contrive 
 
FAR, YET NOT FARTHEST, IN 35 
 
 to come in ; already, sufficient unto the canoe is the cargo 
 thereof. Truly a trial trip ! But if he cometh not this 
 cargo goeth not, so our funny friend lurches in feet first, 
 the intelligent idea being that if these really frightful feet 
 find room his meagre body can easily follow. Already 
 filling fast before you start, you are almost as wet as the 
 traditional drowned rat, and away you wobble on the 
 river. The water is now as much in the boat as the boat 
 in the water. Circling in many a creditable curve, you 
 long "to be over yonder," a negro glued to your back, a 
 brand-new boat and a brand-new experience. It is a 
 remarkable fact — and fact it is — that old Kasonkomona, 
 on the Lufira, used regularly to capsize his canoe at the 
 precise point where, on the morrow, he would dive for the 
 lost treasure — of course, after his half-drowned passenger 
 was well on his way to the next camp. A strong 
 swimmer, he always dramatically saved the sinking 
 voyager, the greedy glitter in his eyes bespeaking salvage 
 operations on the morrow — guns, spears, beads, all 
 harvested from the river bottom. 
 
 Another detail. At each of our camps we are forced, 
 gipsy-like, to build a culinary Ebenezer, not one but three 
 stones necessary for a pot-rest, each new bivouac appro- 
 priately demanding its new Ebenezer. " Hither by Thy 
 help I come," these sermonising stones seem to say every 
 time the pot mounts the memorial heap, and looking away 
 back out to the Ocean I see a long row of Ebenezers, 
 almost enough to build a Temple. That British tinsmith 
 who manufactured my camp copper kettle little guessed 
 
36 THINKING BLACK 
 
 what a prophetic touch he added to his work by graving 
 " Ebeiiezer " on its handle — the very stones and cooking- 
 pot crying out to God in the desert. Indeed, the whole 
 long story can be told in the exact terms of Bunyan's 
 allegory : not a mere playing at " Pilgrim's Progress," for 
 we were pilgrims and we did daily make progress. Many 
 a " Hill Difficulty " lying across our track ; many a 
 " Slough of Despond," too. Many a time we laid up 
 stores of future anguish in a supper of uncooked beans. 
 Often and often we braved the perils of pea-nuts and green 
 corn before turning in. Yet another handful of pea-nuts 
 Likewise a handful of pea-nuts. And so on and on. 
 Just that. On and on. 
 
 Then we get on our legs. Break camp in the silence 
 and solitude of the moonlight, wide awake at every pore, 
 the grey and ghostly light outlining weird forms of fallen 
 trunks and decaying roots. Ours the tip-toe of expectancy, 
 enjoying the two distinct thrills of a cool starry night 
 merging into the reddening dawn waking up the forest. 
 Mark you, only sixty minutes separate prospective blaze 
 from present blackness, yet one hour hence these forest 
 glades glimmering in gloom will seem things of years 
 ago, a far-off memory and dream. Have you caught it ? 
 The mere minutes separating 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. are few 
 and flying, yet once again fancy fights facts, making each 
 of these minutes seem a month. For the awful antithesis 
 yawning between the nocturnal and the diurnal, between 
 the gloom and the glory, defies you to measure it by mere 
 minutes. The antagonism is too abysmal. It is like 
 
FAR, YET NOT FARTHEST, IN 37 
 
 getting up in December to break your fast in June. Even 
 the negro has caught the identical idea when by way of 
 sunrise greeting — his way of saying " Good morning ! " 
 this — he puts to you the phrase, " A night's a year ! " 
 The ghostly gloom is now a gleaming palace of life, 
 and the eerie stillness of the night is blotted into 
 oblivion by the million cries of the morning. The battle 
 of the day resumes. 
 
 So on and in we go. Picture our pleasure on finding 
 at Bailundu and Bihe a splendid type of mission worked 
 by our friends the Americans. Pioneered by one of the 
 " Bible " Bagsters, how suggestive that the family that 
 flooded England with Bibles should also have sent out 
 a living epistle to Africa. Messrs. Sanders, Stover, Fay, 
 Woodside, and Currie were men both winning and wise, 
 and they fought slavery here at its hard headquarters. 
 No wonder the Portuguese were exasperated, for as you 
 drew near these glad little centres of testimony, while 
 yet a long way off" you could hear the Missionaries' names 
 fondled as a household joy ; the names " Sandle " and 
 "Kole" being passwords that work like magic. The 
 same old song this, we ourselves afterwards found in 
 the Garenganze. For, in the teeth of many a hard- 
 mouthed denial from white men, the Missionary, having 
 advanced the claim that the African has as soft a heart 
 as his body is tough, must perforce prove his point. And 
 according to his faith on this " negro heart" subject, even 
 so is it unto him. Mr. Missionary wins the hearts of the 
 whole countryside, and that, too often, to the chagrin of 
 
38 THINKING BLACK 
 
 his resident officials. I had an amusing debate with an 
 exalted personage on this very tender subject, the dialogue 
 being as short as sharp. 
 
 " Why have you Missionaries all the natives around 
 your Mission Station, and the Government scarcely any ? " 
 
 " The Government say ' AUez ! ' and the Mission says 
 ' Allons ! ' " 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 Our African Apprenticeship 
 
"And Moses sent messengers to the king of Edom : 
 
 Let us pass, I pray thee, through thy country : we 
 
 will not pass through the fields, neither will we 
 
 drink of the wells : we will go by the king's high way, 
 
 we will not turn to the right hand nor to the left, 
 
 until we have passed thy borders." 
 
 Numbers xx. 17. 
 
 "And he said. Thou shalt not go through. And 
 Edom came out against him with a strong hand. 
 Thus Edcm refused to give Israel passage through 
 
 his border." Numbers XX. 20, 21. 
 
 "A famous man is Robin Hood . . . 
 And Scotland has a thief as good. 
 An outlaw of as daring mood ; 
 She has her brave Rob Roy." 
 
 4» 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 Our African Apprenticeship 
 
 TA/' HERE AT the reader yawns at 
 African delays, and discovers 
 that patience must be his pet virtue in 
 this lazy land. 
 
 POOR old gin-soaked Bihe ! There it was Joseph 
 Lynn, young Dr. Sparks, and others in later days 
 poured out their lives for the land. Paul-like, 
 ready to be accursed rather than not save souls ; Knox- 
 like, ready to die unless God give him his Scotland. 
 There are few who have done so much, and talked so little, 
 as these dear martyrs, battling on in hard Bihe among 
 drink-sodden slavers. But we restrain ourselves, and 
 laying our wreaths upon their graves pass on. 
 
 That cry of Grog ! Grog ! Grog 1 Not content with 
 their thriving export slavery, the Portuguese resolved 
 to make sure of this bad business by forging a second 
 slave-chain of rum, vulgarly called " nigger killer." And 
 soon Bihe began to fill up with gin-distillers, every other 
 little stream boasting its hell-trap. The liquid sold was 
 such wicked stuff that it could almost corrode a paving- 
 stone — what then happened to the negro ? Result, a 
 
42 THINKING BLACK 
 
 blear-eyed Biliean who would sell his soul and his family 
 to get a drink. 
 
 Quadrupeds first, of course ; then follow the reluctant 
 bipeds, one, two, three fashion. Oh yes, he pauses in 
 the process, for he likes his family, but likes the fire-water 
 best. He even fights the temptation for a week, then all 
 is lost as the first flow of liquor stings its way down the 
 alimentary canal, tearing at his vitals. Wipes his lips 
 now with the back of his hand and — and starts to sell the 
 family. No wonder Scripture, away back at the beginning 
 of the world, kindles for Africa such a beacon of wild 
 warning when it reveals the negro's ancestor naked in 
 his tent, and drink the cause of it all. 
 
 No wonder the pawky English tongue insists that gin 
 = an inebriant and gin = a trap. In Bihe, the sovereign 
 specific, when the supply of slaves languishes, is the rum 
 business. Here it is that slaves are " made to order " ; 
 slaves literal, I mean, as well as slaves moral. A man ran 
 in to one of our Missionaries and said that his father had 
 
 sold his own son for rum, sold to Senr. . First enslaved 
 
 morally by his "fire-water" thirst, the next move was 
 one of frank literal slavery ; sold his own flesh and blood 
 for the fiery fluid. Such a sure source of enslavement 
 is this, that the commoner wile is to advance sundry 
 " modest quenchers " on credit, the sure slavery of thirst 
 ultimately demanding a deal in slaves for liquidation of 
 the liquor bill. Take Senr. Z. of Ohwa ; he gave one 
 Bihean just enough drink, not only to drown the man's 
 wits, but also to drown the drinker at the Kunehe River 
 
OUR AFRICAN APPRENTICESHIP 43 
 
 crossing. Remorseless as destiny, down swoops this gin- 
 seller on the drowned victim's next-of-kin, claiming his 
 pound of flesh. And gets it, too, in two qualities : flesh 
 of man and flesh of beast, an ox and a slave, Katumwa 
 his name. History is silent on how these bereaved 
 Biheans weathered the financial sea, for if they borrowed 
 the slave they would need to pay two for one. Kapapelo, 
 their gin-drunk nephew, lost his balance and was drowned 
 for it ; here is a Portuguese — reader, forgive the 
 sneer ! — resolved not to lose his credit balance at any 
 rate.^ 
 
 A weaker word than "fascinating" would therefore 
 describe the Portuguese methods in Bihe and farther East. 
 Dominating and dwarfing all other issues is the Fort, and 
 round the average Commandant you have a ring of 
 rascals, " Ovimbali," white man's personnel. " No one 
 hearing, one cannot speak," so said Cicero long ago, and 
 so say these hangers-on who buy and sell justice to the 
 highest bidder. Not a mere case this of " having the 
 ear " of their master ; they are his ears and they are his 
 mouth. Coleridge described it all unerringly when he 
 said that "a dwarf sees farther than the giant when he 
 has the giant's shoulder to mount on." Hemmed in by 
 injustice of this sort, the wise native is the man who 
 sanely and shrewdly steers clear of it all. Kan was 
 one such, and wronged though he was, he snapped his 
 fingers at it all : " Why should I go to the Fort for help 
 against the Fort ? Why go to the Chefe ? Is it worth 
 
 ^ See Mr. Swan in The Slavery of To-Day for substantial corroboration. 
 
44 THINKING BLACK 
 
 while to ask the river to champion your cause against the 
 lake, when you can only get water from either ? " 
 
 The Kofwali case will illustrate Fort methods, and 
 establishing as it does a really regrettable precedent we 
 must hoist a danger signal. The thunders of the law 
 roared on poor Kofwali's head because in his own person 
 he dared to confess to being the nephew of a man w^ho 
 when alive was the neighbour of a man who had com- 
 mitted the crime. Judgment : that the said Kofwali, 
 nephew of the neighbour of the accused, be fined two 
 slaves, one ox, and trade goods thrown in. The coloured 
 sergeant got one slave for settling the crime, the claimant 
 had the other slave, the white officer who had given the 
 man a severe beating with the chicotte got the ox for 
 his exertions, and the soldier some of the trade goods for 
 feeding him whilst he was a prisoner, as such are not fed 
 free in the Fort. 
 
 But the hateful exigencies of this story demand an 
 ugly realism. That this foul official often falls foul of 
 the Seventh Commandment is too glaringly undeniable. 
 Mr. Swan's facts are unarguable and must really be 
 repeated to mark the depths of disgrace to which some 
 sink. A woman's child is at the Fort and, straight as a 
 needle to the pole, that woman heads for her bairn ; of 
 course, under the escort of a friendly native who is due 
 there on a visit. Here at headquarters the woman is 
 seduced by the Commandant, and here, too, a roar of 
 rage is heard from the official's own paramour. Alas 
 for prestige ! Now begins a Billingsgate broil, concubine 
 
OUR AFRICAN APPRENTICESHIP 45 
 
 versus Commandant, the legal lion bearded in his own 
 den by his own negress consort. Piqued by the storm 
 in his own household, the Chefe calmly seeks a scape- 
 goat and finds it in the harmless escort who courteously 
 brought the mother after her child. Chuckling with malice 
 and determined to come out of it with colours flying, the 
 Judge on the bench (who should have been prisoner at 
 the bar) condemned the scapegoat to pay two slaves, 
 because — I quote — he having brought the woman and 
 the woman having tempted His Honour the Judge, there- 
 fore judgment must be entered accordingly. 
 
 But the really profitable part of this bad business is 
 " the runaway slave " department. Here you have stay- 
 at-homes who often make more out of it than the zealous 
 man-hunters of Lubaland. Take Senr. Z., for instance, and 
 work out with him this spicy little sum in slave arith- 
 metic. Problem — how to make one slave produce 
 twenty- three other slaves ]^lus oxen, rubber, and pigs 
 thrown in. Now this subterfuge is really as simple as it 
 is common, for he sets the ball a-rolling by so maltreating 
 this one slave that run away she must, and now woe to 
 all who harbour her ! She darts into a hamlet, and 
 breathlessly elated, Snr. Z. darts after her, for that townlet 
 must pay, yes, cash down, ten slaves plus ten ipako (i.e. 
 any other legal currency). Our peppery old colonial rubs 
 his hands with glee at this brisk business, but he is on for 
 more. (Reader, are you working out this sum in awful 
 arithmetic : one slave has now captured ten more, 
 including etceteras?) Next move is nothing new, the 
 
46 THINKING BLACK 
 
 same old bait slave is going to catch more. K is the 
 
 man who is next mulcted, and he pays one young woman, 
 a pig, and a load of rubber ; business is not so brisk, you 
 see. There is better fishing farther on, however, and the 
 village of Lak pays up two slaves, two oxen, and two loads 
 of rubber, all on the vile old plea of harbouring Onesimus. 
 Can we not now strike the grand total and get done with 
 it ? No, we must include a closing (?) item. Farther along 
 there was an open gateway, and this hunted-down slave 
 darts in, only to doom the villagers to a final fine — ten 
 slaves, cash down ! Now you may strike your terrible 
 total. Twenty- three slaves "plus two oxen plus one pig 
 plus three loads of rubber for one runaway slave. Plain 
 arithmetic all this, not rhetoric. Deduction : The Portu- 
 guese put a premium on the maltreatment of slaves. 
 Therefore the old specious pro-slavery argument, running 
 "The man who treats his horse badly is a fool," etc., this 
 argument, I say, is as rotten as is the audacious analogy 
 between a horse and a human being. 
 
 But there is worse to come. Take another vile 
 expedient having the same sad objective, I mean, the 
 swelling of this Westward-going stream of slavery : 
 the " Shylock system " among the natives. Here is the 
 trader's chance, and the borrowing native is soon involved 
 in a quagmire of trouble, to wit, a 1000 per cent extortion 
 on the borrowed goods. (Not an E.O.E. invoice, by 
 any means, for this arrogant Shylock never makes an 
 
 error and never omits anything.) Snr. is a case in 
 
 point : as usual, he does not want his calico back, he wants 
 
OUR AFRICAN APPRENTICESHIP 47 
 
 payment, not in cash but kind, and that kind the best 
 kind, yea, the human kind. Therefore this knave grabs 
 at nine women as against his debt for goods, an account 
 this the natives stoutly refuse to pay because they have 
 already 'paid it in hlood — be it noted the blood of the 
 bulleted debtor, killed by Shylock. Appealing to the 
 Fort, the Chefe votes for his compatriot creditor, arguing 
 that as Shylock has spilled the said blood a few miles 
 beyond the Fort's jurisdiction, obviously the deed must be 
 ignored and the nine slaves retained for the debt. Mark 
 you, here you have blood shed and blood winked at. The 
 Sekeseke case is akin to this : a gentleman he, known to 
 
 his Catumbella friends as Senhor P B . Beating 
 
 a slave for days into a pitiful pulp, of course the said slave 
 died, and was buried at midnight in the corner of his 
 
 garden. Was Senhor P B punished for this 
 
 murder, and if so, when, and where, and by whom ? Now 
 for the swing of the pendulum. 
 
 Not that such slaves learning from such masters are 
 much better : how could they be ? Pouring into Bihe as 
 these streams of slaves do, here in the villages you have 
 the great mixing bowl of West Africa ; and a slave in a 
 few years takes on the Umbundu polish, aping their 
 twang of speech to a nicety, but tripping to the last over 
 an M = V. Will say Monjo for Vonjo, and so forth. 
 Inter-negro slavery, however, is here seen to be a humaner 
 thing ; at least, the slave gets a curious chance among his 
 own colour. Indeed, the ascendancy of many of these 
 freedmen is all very like a page of Gibbon, a master often 
 
48 THINKING BLACK 
 
 being indebted to his slave in the meeting of his lawsuit 
 liabilities. For like all " woman " tribes who dread blood- 
 spilling, the great Bihean terror (and substitute for blood) 
 is this network of Ovimhu = lawsuits, the curious compli- 
 cations arising being a prize conundrum in jurisprudence. 
 Certainly if colour has ever been given to the statement 
 that slavery has something good in it, the most specious 
 side is the domestic servitude. It is a bold assertion to 
 make, but such is the equipoise of events that it may be 
 asserted that the average chief is almost on a par with 
 the average slave. Rex sleeps on the same sort of reed 
 mat as his Onesimus : Rex drinks the same beer : Rex 
 wears the same apology for a garment, and eats the same 
 sundown supper of mush. Nay, the scales go tilt on the 
 wrong side, for often at nightfall a slave slips in a red- 
 legged partridge or parakeet to his guidwife ; contrast 
 the chief who has gone to sleep on vegetables, and his 
 slave sneaking a late game supper ! The same abundance 
 of firewood, too, for master and bondsman alike ; same 
 cooking utensils ; same blend of tobacco, with a communistic 
 whiff from the same gourd pipe. Flowing like a tide, the 
 royal slaver pours into my left ear, defying me to gainsay 
 the fact that his slaves are freer than their lord : " Has 
 not a slave only one master, and is not a king servant of 
 all ? " Besides, the slave has a hidden weapon all the 
 time in the institution of OkuUtumhiJca, i.e. the choice of 
 any master he chooses. Here is an instance where a 
 leathery -lunged slave, " The Creator," they call him, 
 yawned and said he had had quite enough of his master's 
 
OUR AFRICAN APPRENTICESHIP 49 
 
 insolence. So casting around him, tie picks out as ideal a 
 master as he can find, gravely goes across to this new- 
 master's spirit temple and breaks one of the sacred gourds, 
 thereby snapping the old chain and welding a new. Does 
 not the owner of the broken spirit chalice claim the slave 
 as damages ? Law : Damage an article and the damager 
 pays himself in as damages. But one day will see his 
 boldest stroke of all. For, quickly accumulating a small 
 capital, this slave awaits the day when he sees his master 
 in financial straits, and forthwith turns the tables on his 
 lord, actually buying up his own taskmaster. 
 
 Now for the darkest despotism in all slavery ; I mean, 
 the ex-slave ruling the ex-lord with an iron rod. And all 
 this according to that most ancient of sayings passed 
 along in whispers from one bondsman to another : '* If 
 thou art an anvil, be patient, slave my brother ; but 
 if thou art a hammer, strike hard ! " One such ex-slave, 
 called " The Python," ultimately lorded it over our huge 
 caravan, and instead of being abashed at his slave blood, 
 he was precious proud of it : "0 white man, you are 
 proud of your descent, but I am proud of my ascent, 
 was his idea. Coleridge it was who wrote of " the pride 
 that apes humility," and our friend " The Python " had it, 
 for if not pride of race it was pride of place. But make 
 it a rule never, oh ! never to argue with such a fellow — if 
 you fight with a sweep you cannot blacken him, but he 
 may blacken you. Tantalising though he often was and 
 worthy a well-merited wigging, there he stood, head and 
 shoulders above them all, a go-ahead boss just "up from 
 
50 THINKING BLACK 
 
 slavery." He did not cringe to us, and did not mind 
 running risks with his bread-and-butter. Wise, too, with 
 a corrosive sort of wisdom, some things he said were a 
 clever echo of Epictetus (and who by the by was he, if 
 not a slave ?). Even Horace would pardon me for calling 
 him eloquent. (Horace, too, who was he if not a slave's 
 son ?) Yet this man finally became as tame as a friendly 
 mastiff, although all the time a snob to his fellows. And 
 a slave snob, remember, is king of all the snobs ; proves it, 
 too, by kissing the feet of the man above him on the 
 social ladder, while he kicks the other who is below him. 
 Himself a slave by purchase and with a commercial 
 instinct quite in accord with the best traditions of Bihe, 
 he would sell his own father and mother for an old song. 
 Q.E.D. : The Romans were right, "As many slaves, so 
 many enemies " — bad slavery makes a bad slave. 
 
 Why forget that for two centuries and a half the 
 Mamelukes or white slaves of Egypt ruled in luxury 
 farther North ? Slaves though they were, did they not 
 excel in art and poetry ? In later Rome, too, what about 
 the educated slaves who earned large profits as writers, 
 lecturers, bankers, physicians, and architects ? 
 
 But all this is not lost time, for these days of delay in 
 Bihe are really full of African apprenticeship. Pushing 
 on alone as I had done, Mr. Currie kindly gave me 
 sanctuary in his little mud cabin at Chisamba, and many 
 a happy day we spent together. Dieted on raw native 
 mush and beans, this good man (by calling a Missionary, 
 and by necessity everything) was the Canadian outpost 
 
OUR AFRICAN ArPRENTICESHIP 51 
 
 of our American friends. Here, all alone, he camped on 
 
 the edge of a wood, making a beginning by felling tall 
 
 trees and roughing out of the thick bush a clearing for his 
 
 future site. Soon the songs of the wind whistling through 
 
 the woods were answered by the songs of Zion, and thus 
 
 at long last the story of centuries of heathendom was 
 
 ended and a new chapter begun. The large modern 
 
 Chisamba of these later days was long ago cradled there 
 
 in that tiny mud hut in the woods, and I should be 
 
 insolently ungrateful were I to forget these early days of 
 
 promise, eyes ranging over the Eastern skyline, 
 
 " Yearning for the large excitement 
 That the coming years would bring." 
 
 But the negro must really be seen in his own compact 
 and cramped stockade town, and I shall never regret 
 beginning my life in Africa in one such village on the 
 Kunje River. Cooped up inside the same stockade, air 
 stale and sour, we black and white lived together for 
 months, the same beehive huts and porridge our portion. 
 " Chenda," or Pilgrim Town, they called the village, and a 
 kindly old grandmother saw to my comfort. Feeble and 
 wrinkled, this genial body was only one of the withered 
 old " hags " of the modern explorer's book of travels, yet 
 as the days passed and we got on family talking terms, 
 here was a seemingly repellent old negress developed into 
 a charming dowager armed to the finger tips with finish 
 and polish. Listened to your verb Ndu Pandula (Thank 
 you) with a pretty pleased old blush. With her old hard, 
 corrugated hands she stirred my porridge day by day 
 
52 THINKING BLACK 
 
 cooking all the meals with the alacrity of a girl in her teens. 
 Beaming with simple truth, the more this old lady talks 
 the more the scales of prejudice fall from your eyes, and 
 you begin to see her striking resemblance to some English 
 lady you have known. 
 
 In Lubaland I met another such dear granny whose 
 intention was better than her attainment. A beamino; 
 lady, seventy at a guess, she claims to be the champion 
 cook of the country ; tells you, moreover, that she is the 
 Chiefs cook. Proof positive this, that being Chiefs cook 
 she is chief cook also. Has cooked in her day all manner 
 of messes : fat snakes, soft snails, and many another menu 
 item that would look more polite in French than in 
 English. Boiled dogs, she tells me, are her speciality, and 
 according to this authority the Lubans pet their famous 
 dogs for the greedy reason that the very dog that was so 
 friendly before he entered the cooking-pot might still 
 agree with them — in digestion. Well, this kindly dame 
 it was who came poking around my pots and pans, em- 
 boldened by her "Royal Letters Patent" to believe that 
 she, poor soul, could even cook a dainty dish for "he of 
 the boots." Finally, my boy gave me hopelessly away, 
 by hinting that I ate eggs, a very debased sort of diet 
 to a Luban, for in that egg is not the chick yet unborn ? 
 (And if we must eat eggs then, ex hypo., why not wait 
 until they are just old enough to hint that there is a 
 semblance to a chick inside ?) My boy, however, coming 
 to the point with praiseworthy directness in two terse, 
 patronising words condescended to tell this Chief-because- 
 
OUR AFRICAN APPRENTICESHIP 53 
 
 Chiefs cook that she had merely to break the shell and 
 the thing was cooked in a minute. So away trotted my 
 Queen of all the cooks, this and this only ringing in her 
 ears as a kind of key to the new recipe, I mean the advice 
 to break the shell. And break it she did. But watch 
 with what kindly concern she washes that shell — and 
 what do you think ? In best cocksure manner she now 
 gets a stout stick, smashes it up shell and yolk together, 
 the resultant omelette being studded all over with jagged 
 shells sticking out like carpet tacks. Nor did she succeed 
 in putting us off eggs. " Emperors' diet," we call them, 
 even in Africa's dirtiest hole, for when the negro manioc 
 palls, when their meat is tainted, when the cooking oil is 
 rancid, every time you crack the shell of your breakfast 
 egg in a heathen hovel, you equal the crowned heads of 
 Europe. 
 
 But, as I have already hinted, strange though such 
 doings seem, the doers thereof almost resemble your 
 own flesh and blood, the Bihean peculiarly so. This, 
 too, applies to the young darkies who crowd around ; 
 every lad of them suggests his English "double." You 
 feel a bolt shot back in your memory, and get quite 
 certain it is only the lack of a white collar and tie 
 causing them to disresemble their tow-headed English 
 twin-brothers Tommy Jones, John Smith, etc. Coarse fat 
 pigs are the national riches, the said snorters being also 
 the village scavengers. This killing of the pig is a big 
 function in the Bihean family, when there is quite an in- 
 fectious quiver in the air, and he is gobbled utterly up. 
 
54 THINKING BLACK 
 
 The roar of the rejoicing is such that they even beat the 
 Chicago packer's boast that everything about the pig is 
 tinned except the squeal. Yea, they surpass even the 
 America that is great in all things, great even in ex- 
 aggeration. For in Africa the noise is so loud that the 
 negro seems to have swallowed the squeal along with the 
 
 pig- 
 Listen ! Across stream there goes the maddening 
 
 drum, a knot of young fellows having started the music 
 as a signal for the girls to join them, this rub-a-dub roar 
 being really a sort of sweetheart's call. The local crickets 
 have learnt the same trick, for that shrill cry from a 
 thousand cricket throats is merely the male insect rasping 
 his wings as a reed instrument to attract the lady cricket 
 to his side. The frogs with rolling eye are identical, for 
 all their mad croaking is merely Master Toad in yellow 
 waistcoat and tight green trousers wooing his lady with 
 weird calls from the marsh. So Messrs, Negro, Cricket, 
 and Toad are all at the same game on the same night 
 around the same marsh ; all alike in their resolve to use 
 the same African moon with the same noisy music for the 
 same amorous assignation. 
 
 But it is cruel to beat a cripple with his own crutches, 
 and you must not forget that this bewitching moon is the 
 negro's only candle, his only fleeting chance of an evening 
 out of doors. It is not my intention to argue here the 
 ethics of the thing, but let us try to understand before 
 we judge. Taking it all in, cause and effect, condemna- 
 tion and excuse, who shall throw the first stone ? The 
 
OUR AFRICAN APPRENTICESHIP 55 
 
 lurking leopard or hyena forces him into his few feet of 
 stuffy hut during all the waning phases, so now or never 
 is the chance when it looms large like a new half-crown. 
 Right through the night that dance froths and bubbles 
 along, the whole negro from head to heels mad with the 
 moonlight — the Devil's St. Vitus dance ! 
 
 So ingrained is this jigging that even a sedate negro 
 convert to Christianity has still got it in the very bones, 
 "dancing before the Lord" she would call it. Here was 
 a thing to be seen and never forgotten, the Devil's jig 
 consecrated to the Lord. The soul of delicacy and dis- 
 cretion, I spotted an elect lady dancing out her Christian 
 joy as a solemn duty, not a smile in her antics, no thought 
 of the burlesque, yet to me, a new-comer, what a gazing- 
 stock ! The amazing, maddening mix-up of the prayer in 
 the heart and the prance in the feet ! Asked her what it 
 meant at all at all, and she quaintly replied, " Oh ! it is 
 only praise getting out at the toes." Then she actioned 
 this new idea to me — this praise-getting-out-at-the-toes 
 idea, I mean. Making a diagram of her own body, she 
 first of all put her hand over her heart as indicating 
 her central source of joy — " the generator," she called it. 
 Granting then a heart pulsating with joy ; with her crooked 
 old finger she now traces on her body two opposite thrills 
 of joy, one shooting up and through her mouth in vocal 
 praise, the other darting down to her feet — praise getting 
 out at the toes in dancing ! A confession this with a 
 moral, surely, for how much of God's joy is allowed to 
 evaporate by the mouth in mere talk when it should 
 
56 THINKING BLACK 
 
 descend to the feet in real walk. Hamlet's answer too 
 often covering all results, " Words ! Words ! Words ! " 
 
 Again, 1 say, I am glad I went to school wdth the 
 negro in his own town. The mere globe-trotter gets a 
 poor enough chance of getting to know the real African. 
 It is only here, stuck in amongst his own hovel huts, you 
 at last reach the region of hard fact, and a few months 
 of such "slumming" is worth years of monotonous 
 "Station" life. On a Mission Station the black boy is 
 often only a false eager echo of the white man, whereas 
 here, in his hamlet, you are verily chez lui. Lying awake 
 for hours, note- book on pillow, you can listen to their 
 talk, talk, talking, this cheeky chatter you hear being 
 the natural and normal idiom of the native, not that 
 " wooden " Anglo-Bantu so common even among Mission- 
 aries. True, for the first few days they are tongue-tied, 
 and excruciatingly bored by your spying presence ; let a 
 week pass, however, and then you are truly and techni- 
 cally "in." This is what the African means when he 
 sings to the white man the little couplet — 
 
 " Oh, come near, 
 And I'll hear." 
 
 Sleeping inside their fenced town, the awaking at sun- 
 rise is a weird business. There is no daily newspaper for 
 the daily dose of information, so dream-telling becomes a 
 serious substitute. To-morrow's news, that is to say, is 
 more important to them than the stale doings of yesterday. 
 And just as night only blots out a world to reveal a uni- 
 verse, so, even so, dreaming by night is a bigger business 
 
OUR AFRICAN APPRENTICESHIP 57 
 
 than working by day. For to Mr. Negro a dream is an 
 
 avant-courier from to-morrow, a whisper out of eternity 
 
 for the guidance of men. Farther East I came across 
 
 a proof of this. Coming out of tlie grass, I met a band 
 
 of solemn-looking men with a curious old-world look in 
 
 their faces. Wonder of wonders, they were a "dream 
 
 embassy," said they ; had travelled a long way and were 
 
 afoot on a kind of Missionary journey from one great 
 
 chief to another, his friend and faithful ally of years. 
 
 A " dream embassy," mark you, God having spoken to 
 
 their chief in a great dream ; and the solemnity of it all 
 
 had so sunk into the monarch's soul that he sent oflf these 
 
 Missionaries of his dream to warn his dear friend, a 
 
 brother-king, of the ways of God with man. So serious 
 
 a thing is this dream -telling that they have coined a 
 
 special verb (Lotolwela), " to expound a dream." Not in 
 
 the temper of mere expediency did I listen to their sacred 
 
 story, the negro tete-a-tete with the Infinite, men on the 
 
 march for many miles, their theme, God ! God ! God ! 
 
 Picture me there a dazed Missionary listening to these 
 
 dream-tellers — listening and wondering, listening and 
 
 wondering — as with uplifted hands they point skywards 
 
 and paint it all so vividly. Telling me of the stately 
 
 goings of God in their far-away marsh ; how that He 
 
 challenged their king as to his dignity ; how that the 
 
 king responded with his long array of titles ; and how that 
 
 the more he vaunted before God the less did his strength 
 
 become. Yet again and again did God so ask him who 
 
 he was, and just so often did their king make this foolish 
 5 
 
58 THINKING BLACK 
 
 boast of dignity — only to find his strength oozing out of 
 his body. But just as in painting light is brought out 
 by shade, so this king learned the secret of power from 
 this very secret of weakness. For finally God said He 
 would "make an end," and this word "end" w^as the 
 beginning of bliss. Said the monarch : " King ? no king 
 am I, but a worthless slave. All kingship is Thine and 
 all power ! " Then it was the wondrous tide of power 
 flowed back into his body : the weakling now a giant ; the 
 abject a strong man made strong out of weakness. Mere 
 dream though it was, it has solemnly crystallised into 
 dogma, and here am I a Missionary stumbling across these 
 other "dream" Missionaries in the grass. In our zeal 
 for God's written record we are too apt to treat all this 
 as a weird and doubtful business — mere misty dream. 
 Forsetful of the fact that God's own Book it is that 
 declares, "in a dream . . . He openeth the ears of men." 
 Forgetful, likewise, that if England does not get these 
 divine dreams it is because England, a land full of Bibles, 
 does not need them. Forgetful, finally, that God may 
 speak to those to whom He does not write. 
 
 In Lubaland, one old man, "The Snuff-maker" by 
 name, beats the whole land at length of hair, and this 
 because he has bound himself with an oath never, never- 
 more to <iet his hair trimmed. He dreamed a dream, 
 but the dream played him false ; and, as the head is the 
 dreamer and not the heart, he doomed his head to the 
 endless rebuff — of nevermore visiting the barber. A great 
 punishment, indeed, but so, too, had that dream been 
 

OUR AFRICAN APPRENTICESHIP 59 
 
 great, a gorgeous vision of royalty and riches. Vividly 
 in his sleep, old Mr. Snuff-maker saw himself acclaimed 
 king of the country, loud rang the cheers as he ascended 
 the dream-throne, and then — then broke a grey chilly 
 dawn to undeceive and drag him down to dirt and poverty, 
 " a fading away inheritance," he calls it. But the stout 
 old soul could not go back on the word that had gone 
 forth from his lips. So the days grow long and the hair 
 grows longer, but onward he must go on his unchanging 
 way. What an opening for me to bring out my Gospel 
 wares and offer this old dream-duped man " an inherit- 
 ance that fadeth not away." His riches came in a 
 dream and went the way they came. 
 
 ^ * * 
 
 To revert to our stockade hamlet, scavengered by pigs 
 and vultures. Your mode of getting " in," remember, is 
 quite akin to the way you get into their huts. This 
 negro doorway is so low that you must double up like a 
 half-shut pocket-knife before you can effect an entrance, 
 and so, too, with the metaphoric doorway of the black 
 brain. British bluff is of no avail, and only by stooping 
 can you wriggle into both Africa the land and Africa 
 the man. Now is the time to consult Alice's famous 
 " book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes." 
 It is the old story of harvest gleaning. Good gleaners 
 must be good stoopers even in this harvest-field of black 
 beehive huts. You don't bow to the negro, but you 
 must bow to his dwarf doorway — " stoop to conquer," in 
 fact. As narrow almost as they are low, these same door- 
 
60 THINKING BLACK 
 
 ways of course debar a hurried egress. The story goes 
 that the advent of a rare white skin one day caused a 
 stampede among the frightened female population, one 
 well-aimed rush being made for a very narrow but very 
 inviting doorway. Unfortunately for some of these 
 swarthy bipeds, a very stout dowager stuck fast in this 
 rat's hole entrance, effectually blocking the ingress of her 
 sauve qui pent sisters behind her. The narrator of this 
 event in African history relieves our anxiety by informing 
 us that the lady was eventually extricated from her 
 uncomfortable position, and would doubtless personally 
 supervise the building of her own front door in future. 
 Deduction : You dare not (because cannot) rush the 
 African town of Mansoul. 
 
 To ask for anything in the Portuguese loaded-revolver 
 tone of voice is to shut yourself out by bolts and bars, 
 and all the facts and forces of the negro's life will be lost 
 to you. Be sure of it, to be " Farthest In " is a poor 
 enough thing if it only applies to the mere elementary 
 geography of Central Africa. Yet is it a pathetic fact 
 that many a man can live a long life in the land and 
 never be really in Africa, and such a man regularly reveals 
 his personality in the curiously candid confession : " Yes ! 
 I can speak all right to the native, but cannot catch what 
 he says." Now, where does this land him ? It means, of 
 course, that as the years pass his ears are shut to the 
 steady stream of black speech that should be daily flood- 
 ing his ears and washing out of the brain his purely sub- 
 jective ideas. The result is obvious, and here you have 
 
OUR AFRICAN APPRENTICESHIP 61 
 
 a man who will never really be in Africa because Africa 
 never really gets into him. 
 
 But mere negation is not the worst part of the story. 
 For positively here is a white man who must be somebody 
 in Africa, so, dissembling this much-lacking in-streaming 
 flood of pure negro ideas, he pumps up his poor Engli.'^h 
 counterfeits from the deeps of his British breast. Thus, 
 too drearily often, English idiom is domesticated on African 
 soil, and the user of it, though he lives for fifty years in 
 the land, will never really to his last day be in Africa. 
 "Bantu of the boots," is their phrase for this wooden 
 Anglo-African speech. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 "Boring in" Farther 
 
"Jog on, jog on, on the footpath way, 
 And merrily hent the stile-a; 
 A merry heart goes all the way, 
 Your sad tires in a mile-a." 
 
 "Still with Sound of Trumpet 
 Far, far off the daybreak call : 
 Hark ! how loud and clear I hear it wind 
 Swift to the Head of the Army, 
 Swift, spring to your places : 
 Pioneers, O Pioneers!** 
 
 "Sometimes a light surprises 
 The Christian while he sings; 
 It is the Lord Who rises 
 With healing in His wings." 
 
 64 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 "Boring in" Farther 
 
 Jyf/' HEREIN the traveller reads 
 his first lesson in " thinking 
 blacky'"' and discovers that to be in Africa 
 the said Africa must be in him. 
 
 IG with fate as these early days in Bihe are, the great 
 event of our real start is now looming in the near 
 future, and our prospective caravan gives us a lot of 
 work. For here in Bihe we find out that the launching of 
 a Far-Interior caravan is as ceremonial a function as the 
 sister ceremony in connection with a British battleship. It 
 seems that just as God gives us the stars and we all make 
 our own astronomy, so Mr. Genus Homo Africanus seizes on 
 a hundred humdrum events and drives the monotony out of 
 them by some formal, fashionable function. This setting 
 out of a Far-Interior caravan, for instance, is one such 
 event, and so orthodox in character that you must begin 
 by ceremonially " going into camp," as the phrase goes. 
 Now, this only means that you formally shake the dust from 
 your feet, by leaving your village hut, and, picking out a 
 bit of forest, you hoist your private flag on the highest 
 
 06 
 
66 THINKING BLACK 
 
 tree : the solemn " Blue Peter " this, notifjiDg all comers 
 that your land ship has already set out on its long voyage. 
 Yet, as a matter of fact, the real start is many a month 
 ahead, but deeds are the only eloquent words in Africa — 
 and have you not, after all, gone a few formal yards from 
 village to forest ? So, there in the woods, you build a hut, 
 and out to that camp your prospective carriers troop, 
 spending the dragging days quizzing you as to proposed 
 route and destination. One-sided enough this heckling, 
 for you must be precise and pertinent in your answers, 
 whereas the negro only responds to your questions in a 
 vague, non-committal voice. This policy of make-believe, 
 however, has an excellent effect on the raw negro, who is 
 all eyes and no ears, and the result is that right off, the 
 news goes buzzing round the district that the " big devil " 
 {Ochindele) really means business at last. Then comes 
 the first crowd of volunteers. Be sure you write in pencil, 
 though, not ink, for generally a few negro wags lead off 
 by making counterfeit overtures to join your caravan, the 
 false names being eagerly recorded by the impatient white 
 man. Merely the "lead pencil" men these, who turn out 
 to be as visionary as the Secretary of War's " spectral 
 force," and this crowd soon thins to a trickle of *' faithfuls." 
 One by one your real Olongamba (carriers) reluctantly 
 permit you to write them down, Ham, " the servant of 
 servants," being for once wholly the master of this situation, 
 and you of Japheth his grovelling suppliant. His whole 
 talk in these preliminary days of negotiation is flavoured 
 with a good spice of negro condescension, for did not this 
 
"BORING IN" FARTHER 67 
 
 very black man pick us all up on the Bengueila seashore 
 and carry us, like mere baggage, on and into his own 
 interior ? No wonder, therefore, the whole district from 
 which you recruit your carriers is converted into a huge 
 " penny in the slot " machine, for you must put in your 
 money before anything can be got out of it. Moreover, 
 this note of independence struck so early and so frankly 
 in Bihe is continued through the long journey until at 
 Kavungu there is a real revolt, mine and countermine, 
 repulse and attack for days. Thus you see what a 
 masterful mind this Bihean of ours has, the real 
 "pioneers" being these old blacks, who are not bashful 
 in reminding us of the fact. 
 
 These, moreover, are the needy days when to your 
 profit and loss you solemnly invest in a " Man Friday." 
 Cook, Treasurer, and What-not of the caravan, **boy" he 
 is called, even to his fortieth year. Nor is this compact 
 between you, his master, and him, your factotum, so 
 quickly sealed and settled. Fixing you with his fathomless 
 black eyes, with appalling candour of comment he leads off 
 by inquiring stonily if you mean to cheat him as the last 
 Portuguese did, and generally " heckles " you as though you 
 were a prospective local M.P. His fatal facility for jabber 
 is such that he almost argues you into the belief that you 
 will cheat him, his theory of this solemn compact being 
 that it is all a mere speculation, on the principle of " heads 
 you get paid, tails you work for nothing." However, after 
 half a dozen inapposite questions ("temper-testing," it is 
 called), you close with him, and Man Friday, very conse- 
 
68 THINKING BLACK 
 
 quential, annexes your pots and pans with much slamming 
 and banging. A child of earthenware utensils, what sweet 
 music there is to him in the bang of an iron pot. This in 
 fact is the very thing that makes him careless, for with his 
 own fragile native thing he must be high-strung and care- 
 ful even to trembling. But a donkey must be coaxed 
 with carrots, and this culinary compact is generally signed, 
 sealed, and delivered by a sort of " taking the shilling " on 
 his part — calico, not cash, being the currency. It must be 
 white and not dark in colour this fabric, otherwise you 
 will have symbolised sorrow and not joy. So you go with 
 the tempting tide, and having conciliated your friend the 
 cook (" your mother " is his phrase), off he swaggers to the 
 native quarters, all glorious in a loin-cloth as w^iite as 
 the untrodden snow. You can see that his very way of 
 donning this white prophecy of happiness is, on his part, a 
 sort of flourish in the face of fortune by which he, the said 
 Wanga, defies the future and the fates. Indeed, as if it 
 were all a page of Homer, has he not consulted the 
 " Omens " for a favourable start ? 
 
 Does this story drag? Blame our negro and let us 
 move forward — Eastward Ho ! Watch now the rule of 
 the Far-Interior road. Yonder a thousand miles from the 
 Ocean is your objective, and the ftirther in you "bore" — • 
 that word again — your pilgrim kit necessarily assumes an 
 austerely simple aspect. Like ballooning in cloudland, the 
 higher you want to ascend the more ballast you must 
 throw out, and even so with this Far-Interior caravan 
 of ours. At the Mildmay prayer meeting did not that 
 
-BORING IN " FARTHER 69 
 
 pious lady whose house had been burgled the night before 
 return thanks to the Lord that " He had made her lighter 
 for the upward flight " ? And we too had been robbed, 
 not by person but by place, for our last and nearest bank 
 lay far behind on the Benguella shore. Praise Him, 
 £ s. d. is demonetized in those early days, and the only 
 cheque-book you can reckon upon is God's own blank 
 cheques, your Bible. Did not Billy Bray love to say, 
 " The promises of God are just as good as ready money any 
 day " ? So the fact gradually soaked into our souls that 
 we could only run the race set before us as we laid aside 
 every weight. Such surely was the pinch of this particular 
 party. Narrow indeed is the way that leadeth into the 
 Far Interior. In this exceptionally hard year the Garen- 
 ganze trail is indeed a narrow cork-screw thing, and our 
 far-oflf goal can only be gained by a minimum of "dead 
 loads." Two pairs of boots, two shirts, and (oh luxury !) 
 just two or three humble handfuls of tea for the long 
 journey and longer imprisonment ahead. The pity of it, 
 such a pauper provision of tea for the days of acclimatisa- 
 tion lying in wait for us. At first, this terrible tea was 
 reserved only for the high solemnities of our vagabond life. 
 As the days of depletion advanced on us, however, and the 
 tea nearly finished, it was only by the feeling of a sudden 
 plunge into profligacy we dared to drink a coward cup of 
 straw-coloured tea. Crouching like a devotee at a shrine, 
 before a smoky fire, your Missionary, in the most appro- 
 priate of kneeling attitudes for such a function, brewed 
 his "cup that cheers" with all the solemnity of a high 
 
70 THINKING BLACK 
 
 priest ojffering an oblation. Even long after that last tea- 
 masking had given out, we were still, with a tragic 
 intensity, boiling and reboiling the useless leaves, for the 
 sixth time certainly. Nor did we fail to get at least white 
 steaming cups of best " Memory Blend," for the tea was so 
 weak that it had to be imagined. Long afterwards we 
 roasted a native pea into supposititious coffee, but to 
 the end this poor substitute was a doctor's dose, not 
 a "cup that cheers" but a sort of pharmaceutical 
 preparation. 
 
 But our real problem is not Africa but the African. 
 Wouldst thou have a key to " thinking black " ? Then 
 look at him. 
 
 Paul was accused of turning the world upside down, 
 but if you mix enough with these natives and use your 
 eyes a bit, an hour of it will suffice to give you the notion 
 that you are standing on your head, life is all so upside 
 dowli. Yonder is a ferryman in his boat, but see the 
 black turning tables on the white by placing his back to 
 the stern, face to the bow, and off he starts paddling as 
 though he were stirring his porridge, not his canoe. 
 Laugh you first, but he laughs last ; for to him, what 
 sense is there in a white man looking one way and rowing 
 another ? Wise ? Nay, he shakes his head and opines we 
 Europeans are wise, but our wisdom is rather shovv'y than 
 exact. The black man, he thinks, is wiser than he seems, 
 and the white one seems wiser than he is. No wonder 
 this looking-one-way-and-rowing-another attitude of the 
 white man becomes the negro's parable for an incon- 
 
"BORING IN" FARTHER 71 
 
 sistent Missionary. Why does he not go in the direction 
 he looks ? Why preach this and practise that ? 
 
 It is now raining, be it noted, and the problem stands 
 how to save his bare black body from the cold ; very 
 adroitly he draws into shore and dips deep in the water 
 to get out of the wet. For the fisher law is that being 
 wet you must get wetter in order to get dry. Watch 
 now the same man land in the reeds, donning his clothing. 
 Out there in the piercing cold he was as bare as the blast 
 that stung him, but now ashore when the sun scorches he 
 can be seen sporting not one but two sets of garments, the 
 whole surmounted with a mighty blanket of many hues. 
 Now watch the same man beginning to cultivate. There 
 he is gripping his spade, and digging away in the 
 opposite manner to ours — that is to say, he digs towards 
 and not away from himself. Of course, after sending the 
 earth flying at this rate, he is now dirty, but that means 
 he is white ; for a negro is black when he is clean and 
 white when he is dirty. 
 
 Give him, if you dare, a book to read, and he will 
 surely hold it upside down. Watch him with a pencil 
 affecting a fair and clerkly handwriting, and he is sure to 
 begin the prank from right to left. Ask him now for a 
 drink of water, and being the very pink of courtesy he 
 must take first drink, the gourd-cup receiving a loud 
 labrose smack as first gulp. Reeking of resultant aroma 
 Africanum, you may now have you7' sip, for has he not 
 guaranteed the said water pure from poison, as saith their 
 proverb, "Drink first, die first"? Even the almanac 
 
72 THINKING BLACK 
 
 turns somersault, for here is an African winter as hot 
 as an Indian summer sweeping over the country like a 
 fire : a conundrum in human speech, " a fiery freezing 
 winter." Watch now the same negro produce a pair of 
 ancient boots, and carefully as fastidiously lace them up 
 with bark rope — surely this time he is going to be normal 
 at last. Not he, for quite solemnly he produces an old 
 pair of socks and wears them outside his boots. The 
 same man again sports a starched shirt once white, but 
 now unredeemedly vile, a vision of smudges. Down 
 dips the sun and out come the stars, but the tale of 
 topsy-turvy ism is not yet finished. There is your old 
 Northern friend the " Great Bear " on the horizon, but 
 this time he is upside down. Sprawling on his back in a 
 manner most undignified for a respectable constellation, 
 he is one more instance of the somersault ways of this 
 queer land. 
 
 (Later.) 
 
 But stay. These upside-down doings are not yet 
 complete. 
 
 The scene again changes, but not the subject. Enters 
 a young slip of a girl who has been beaten for no fault of 
 hers, yet never a tear does she shed : no tears mark you, 
 and no crime did she commit. On plying them with ques- 
 tions, I find that far from her innocence being conjectural 
 they blandly admit she did nothing worthy of stripes. 
 Yet she got them all, forty plus more, and the curiously 
 candid confession is that because she was innocent there- 
 fore was she beaten with many stripes. It now comes 
 
'* BORING IN" FARTHER 73 
 
 out that the African can wriggle out of even this injustice, 
 the explanation being that the girl is a twin, and as her 
 sister did the deed they must be beaten in pairs; not 
 either nor neither, but both or none. Twins they were 
 born and twins they live and die. So mad are the Africans 
 on this twin subject that even when Miss First gets 
 married, the bridegroom is forced to marry her twin-sister 
 Miss Second on the same day. (Although these sisters 
 are slim little things, yet literally their names are Miss 
 Elephant and Miss Hippo, all twins being forced to take 
 these two traditional titles. ) There was a case here where 
 twin-brothers were forced to marry the same lady, so in- 
 exorably operates this dogging law. Right up from birth 
 each has ever haunted the other, their food being scrupu- 
 lously divided into two, the twin bairns with twin portions. 
 In proffering them a gift you must sternly make it a two- 
 handed one, simultaneously holding out both arms to both 
 recipients. When a twin sickens mortally no doctor may 
 be called nor any medicine administered, all mourning 
 being deprecated. God, they say, did this deed of creating 
 " terrible twins," and God must kill or cure them. The 
 only way to wish them well is by cursing them, and these 
 cursings the complacent twins receive as choice compli- 
 ments. The hapless father and mother likewise get all 
 the town abuse, each vituperation being a sort of upside- 
 down blessing. Yet these are the very folks who would 
 throw the old anti-Paul taunt at us about turning the 
 world upside-down. Dare to suggest to them this, and 
 Mr. African at once engages in a very unfavourable 
 
n THINKING BLACK 
 
 diagnosis of the mental state of a " white " who can 
 hazard such nonsense. 
 
 {19th June 1890.) 
 Here comes June, and the time to be up and off. 
 Across a brook, on the third, we ^ wave good-bye to kind 
 Mr. and Mrs. Arnot, and away East we go, off and out 
 of Bihe. Just in time, too, for war is brewing, the 
 Bihean bent on giving his last national kick at the 
 Portuguese. More than that : this brewing storm breaks 
 behind our backs, and we are swept before it, not out 
 to the Ocean — that has storms enough — but into our 
 long-loved, long-lived-in Interior. My old friend Senhor 
 Silva Porto, Capitao Mor, seeing trouble ahead, resolved 
 on sudden suicide, and blew himself up with gunpowder. 
 A dramatic death this. Six barrels of gunpowder lined 
 out as deathbed, the said six covered with a drapery of 
 Portuguese flags, the old Portuguese topping it all as sad- 
 hearted sacrifice. Up went the famous explorer in an 
 explosion, and down went the old Bihe dynasty in that 
 same smash. For this death of Silva Porto must be 
 avenged. Too long ignored by his own nation, too long 
 despised by the Biheans, here is his solution to force the 
 
 ^ Peccavil I find I have been remiss in my introductions — who are the 
 " We " ? In the sequence of seniority the names are Messrs. Thompson, Lane, 
 and "the writer," a niere boy in those days. A threefold cord not easily 
 broken, we were utter strangers to each other at the start and represented 
 the three nationalities of our race. Yet I can recall with delight the splendid 
 lives these good men lived before my eyes, the consummate fellowship being a 
 treasure. Mere rules and regulations in Africa are a poor enough guarantee 
 for a tranquil time, but if love be the fulfilling of the whole law, then love 
 guided by the Word of God is better than any code of laws. 
 
o 7 1 a a o 
 
 > ? V i J > > 
 
 THE ETERNAL PROBLEM 
 " How to Cross." 
 
-BORING IN' FARTHER 7^ 
 
 Government's hands. And, sure enough, Bihe was 
 broken : Captain Paiva's joint expedition of Portuguese 
 and Boers came on the scene, the king captured and carried 
 off to San Tome. There the wild Atlantic is Portugal's 
 surest sentinel on that lonely isle ; there the slaves find 
 themselves so hopelessly locked in for life that they eat 
 earth for suicide. 
 
 This is how we take the great plunge. An Ombala, 
 or Chiefs town, rests upon the top of the rather steep 
 slope slanting down to the sandy Kwanza beach, crowded 
 with " dugouts." But this ramshackle village is so very 
 much the key to the crossing that you must enter by its 
 front gate, wriggle through the huts of the malodorous 
 town to effect your exit on the shore. We don't stand 
 long, however, ere there files down to the beach a long 
 trading caravan, waving the big flag of little Portugal, 
 and this with ours makes a fine babel in bidding for 
 canoes. Meantime, Messrs. Thompson and Lane have 
 crossed to receive our loads, while I remain for three 
 mortal hours to direct the crossing. Then (Heaven-sent 
 chance !) the old broken-backed chief comes down, and we 
 sit cheek by jowl chatting Christianity. With one foot 
 in the grave, here is a withered old man treating you to 
 a long, disconcerting scrutiny, and quizzing incredulously 
 as to our Garenganze Gospel venture. We yet await 
 classification, it seems ; we are not traders, nor raiders, 
 therefore he cannot get at us, cannot " place " us. 
 The only category he can conceive is that of the " people 
 who live by doing nothing." The Vachokwe tribe, next- 
 
76 THINKING BLACK 
 
 door neighbours but one, kindly allowing for a probable 
 touch of African sun, called us the Afulu, or " Softies," 
 this because we refuse to point a business-looking 
 revolver at their nose. Farther East still we were 
 dubbed " The God-ites " because we preach the Gospel, 
 and sometimes "The Feminines" because we refuse to 
 spill blood. With his bunch of charms round the neck, 
 you can see it is all — Church of God, for shame ! — so 
 bewilderingly new, newness being naturally the bar sinister 
 of African thought. Antiquity in Africa means sanctity, 
 remember : a tremendous affair this antiquity, a religion 
 almost. "An old well-worn path must lead up to a big 
 chief" is their way of saying that their millions of a 
 majority {"the well-worn path" of precedent) has out- 
 voted you and your Christianity. You, a mere Mission- 
 ary in the microscopic minority of one, where is your 
 well-beaten track of precedent inspiring the traveller's 
 confidence ? With your white skin and creaking boots, 
 he looks at you as though, perchance, you were the 
 denizen of another planet. Oh 1 drop with me a tear for 
 the poor old men and women of Africa who hug their 
 fetishes, and whose hearts are the dwellings of night. 
 They have a weird way of waving you off, as much as to 
 say, "Too late! It is not for me." Can their idea be, 
 that as the grave is so soon to receive their dust, why 
 should they offer Christ the wreck of their souls ? The 
 sad old tell-tale faces seem each to say, with a wail : — 
 
 "Look in my face: my name is ' IVfiglit have been'; 
 I am also called 'No more,' 'Too late,' 'Farewell.'" 
 
"BORING IN " FARTHER 17 
 
 It is in talking with all such, that the Missionary hears 
 the bugle call of the long-coming struggle ahead — I mean 
 the lack of conviction of sin. Unlike a man in England, 
 cradled in Gospel privilege, here we meet thousands of 
 souls who cannot feel remorse, for they are only the 
 children of their dark ancestors who lived and died in 
 darkness. Ask such an one if he is at peace with God, 
 and he, a negro who was never sick or sorry in his life, 
 will answer with alacrity that he never quarrelled with 
 Him. No wonder that peace had to be " made " for such, 
 apart from their opinion on the matter. They themselves 
 say of true conviction of sin, "A shivering man does not 
 need to be forced to the fire," and this is the reason there 
 has been no authentic weeping for sin in any African 
 Mission until a preliminary period of evangelical witness 
 has been passed. Then the tears begin to glisten over 
 personal (not tribal, this time) responsibility. 
 
 (Later. )^ 
 Across the gulf of twenty years, ours is the pure 
 untarnished joy to see many such old folk rejoicing in the 
 evening of life. Their morning broke grey and their mid- 
 day was dark and stormy, but the glory of this evening 
 sunset blots out the memory of their gloom. When one 
 beholds the sacred sight of a group of grey woolly heads in 
 a meeting, listening with a glaze over their eyes and a fog 
 over their souls, one feels stirred anew to press on. They 
 
 ^ Occurring, as it does, quite often, this " Later " indicates that the section 
 of the narrative it introduces is subsequent in time but similar in character 
 to the conditions of the context. 
 
78 THINKING BLACK 
 
 believe, some of these old dears, believe with aged bodies 
 and childhood hearts. Summer has come late to them, 
 no doubt, but it is the summer of God that knows no 
 winter. There they are, crooning an old "Golgotha" 
 song of Christ's dying pangs. Pitched on the wrong key, 
 notes all out, yet I defy you to deny that they are 
 singing sense into that holy hymn. 
 
 {20th August.) 
 It is notorious that our African is a congenital liar, 
 and here comes an example. Breaking your way along 
 the trail, any native travellers you encounter make 
 strange temporising manoeuvres until convinced you 
 come peaceably. A party of six carrying food signals 
 us a long distance off, and their plan is literally to 
 "hedge" us. Immediately all the baskets are in hiding 
 in the grass, along with five of the party who lie flat 
 with bated breath, while No. 6, a bolder spirit he, comes 
 slowly along the path till we accost him. His story is 
 always a stupid concoction of lies, not at all cleverly 
 spun, but palpably false; not mere "embroidery," that 
 is to say, but the lie circumstantial. When, however, you 
 divulge your identity as peaceful nobodies, away to the 
 winds go his fears, and he coolly whistles up his friends 
 in hiding, utterly regardless of the lie-direct this ugly 
 appearance of theirs gives to his sheepish story. Nor is 
 our rascal ashamed one tiny bit. For with eyes liquid 
 with mirth he — ^just a plain everyday liar — enjoys it all, 
 and sees no sting in the suggestion that he is one of the 
 greatest tale-tellers within the confines of the solar 
 
"BORING IN" FARTHER 79 
 
 system. Suggest that he is a silly liar and he will soon 
 prove that he is a master of the art by arguing that there 
 was no "cuteness " in thus frankly owning up : is not the 
 man who sticks to one lie forced to invent twenty more to 
 maintain that one ? So there is a method in this madness 
 after all. (Remember the sub- title of this book should be : 
 "The Blacks as bad as the Whites.") When, however, 
 the English negrophobes proceed to prove from this that 
 such a long liar cannot be a man but a monkey, then it is 
 — ^just then ! — this very negro proves from his very mode 
 of mendacity that he is a Britisher's own brother. For, 
 baffling personality though he be, this black man backs 
 his lie with blasphemy, It la Whitechapel, dragging down 
 the name of God into the mud of mendacity, " As sure as 
 
 G ! " the famous formula of his sin. Why is it that 
 
 lost blacks like "found " whites all sharpen the point of a 
 lie with the name of God and thus drive it home ? Yet 
 they inconsistently laugh at our preaching about God. 
 There is no God to worship, no God to serve, no God to 
 pray to — only a God to swear by. 
 
 To prove that this is no mere subjective notion on a 
 Missionary's part, this black link with England becomes 
 realistic when you see that same negro draw his finger 
 across his throat, the accompanying formula being that 
 old refuge of lies : "As sure as death ! " Verily the 
 whole world is kin, for here is a black man sighting a 
 white skin for the first time in his life. Watch, too, that 
 parting quip he throws at you just as he disappears into 
 the grass. Like a naughty British schoolboy off he goes, 
 
80 THINKING BLACK 
 
 pulling down his brown eyelid with mock-anxious solici- 
 tude as to there being any green therein. 
 
 M, M, ^ w~ 
 
 TT •SS" T^ 
 
 We now swing from melodrama to grim tragedy, and 
 here is a stern old priest who has just killed his young 
 brother, yet not the least concerned. A famous decocter 
 of poisons, his brother was chased into his own village by 
 some neighbours who accused him of theft. The grim 
 old priest listened to his brother's protestations of inno- 
 cence, then, spreading out his hands pontifically, said in 
 really a relieved voice, " Oh ! then, if thou art innocent, 
 thou wilt drink this poison ordeal to justify thyself." 
 So, suiting the way to the words, this son of the witch 
 of Endor, with the blind and magnificent enthusiasm of 
 their cult, asked his beloved younger brother to enter the 
 house, passed in the lethal cup, a few minutes sufficing to 
 kill his man. Meanwhile, love or no love, here is the old 
 priest spurning that very corpse of the victim-brother, his 
 belief being that inherent righteousness is so mighty that 
 it can neutralise even the deadliest drug. His brother 
 beloved, therefore, died with a lie in his breast — "We 
 can do nothing against the truth," is the saying of these, 
 the world's greatest liars. In plain English, here you 
 have the impudent paradox that where lying abounds 
 there, even there, truth — in theory — much more abounds. 
 So here comes the conundrum : How can a nation of 
 liars consistently believe we can do nothing against the 
 truth, locked up in a falsely accused man's breast ? If he 
 is innocent he will not die. Plied the old priest with 
 
''BORING IN" FARTHER 81 
 
 questions, but at the end we were no nearer than the 
 poles, for he stuck to it that neither fire, nor water, nor 
 poison could kill by ordeal a really just man. So, instead 
 of burial, the body was condemned to what is called 
 " witch cremation," the smoke and flame ascending " to 
 feed the stars." With the slight stammer that gives a 
 charming emphasis to his remarks, here is an old liar 
 preaching to me a homily on the Truth, a subject he 
 knows very little about, for sure am I his telegraphic 
 address is not " Veracity, Africa." The Arab's version 
 of this negro inconsistency runs thus : " A crow exclaimed, 
 God is the Truth." " Then," quoth the listeners, " the 
 dirt-scraper has turned preacher." 
 
 (Later.) 
 See how the Devil outwits the Devil. Two hours 
 antecedent to my pitching camp, there had been a foul 
 murder. Constructive, premeditated butchery, the very 
 devilishness of this deed created quite an atmosphere 
 for my message. The long-smothered tribal conscience 
 begins to assert itself, and for two long days they hang on 
 my evangel, the whole being uttered in a conciliating I- 
 do-not-talk-to-you-but-with-you kind of tone. They now 
 actually wince at the very thought of death, they, the 
 wantons, who otherwise would have been nonchalant. 
 Every mention I make of it is a jag to the murderers, and 
 if they are not prepared to think of death they are not 
 prepared to meet him, for if the shadow alarms them what 
 of the reality ? Yes, murder will out. I came on the 
 trail of a butchery of three travellers, husband, wife, and 
 
82 THINKING BLACK 
 
 son. A tiny thing proved the clue, and soon this hidden 
 horror was heard crying out to Heaven as loud as the 
 blood of Abel. The whole thing would have been hid — 
 one of the many mysteries of the marshes — had not a 
 young woman died at Chisenga, the usual Nanga being called 
 in to consult the oracle as to cause of death. This old 
 " borderland professional " (their local title, this) was not 
 lackino; in the true bloodhound instinct of scenting; a trail. 
 Ringing up the underworld for information, the oracle 
 himself replied that the girl had died a natural death, yet 
 some other dead people were crying from the ground for 
 veno;eance. And now the " devil-doctor " turns fierce on 
 his clients and upbraids them for hiding even a little from 
 him : " Confess and I absolve," cried he. " Look at the 
 poisonous cassava we eat as tribal diet : by soaking it in 
 water it loses its deadly effect, and so, too, with that bitter 
 secret of murder in your breast, pour it out to your priest 
 and it will lose its sting ! " But still they are obdurate, 
 so the old doctor snaps his fingers at them, says that he 
 is a man of many means, and again rings up the oracle, 
 with the result that it all comes out. For during her 
 illness that dying woman had received kindly care from 
 her husband, and among other things he robed her in a 
 fancy red shawl. " Now," said the wily Ranga dramati- 
 cally, "that shawl was a blood-shawl." And sure enough 
 in two ticks he pieced together the genuine data of a 
 triple murder and plunder from this shawl clue. (If one 
 may speak of the light of conscience, then they have got it 
 — ^just enough to light them to Hell !). The murderer 
 
''BORING IN" FARTHER 83 
 
 was a canoe-man who found out soon enough that dead 
 men can chase the living both above ground and beneath. 
 These three strangers had come to the ferry seeking a 
 crossing, and soon they were shooting across the creeks to 
 the other side. But as the time passed, the ferryman 
 slowly and surely found himself in the deadly grips of 
 this murderous idea to kill his passengers and grab their 
 goods, particularly that red shawl, yes, that hlood-red 
 shawl. So he did the deed, speared the lot, and threw 
 the bodies to the crocs. But watch how heaven, earth, 
 and water are leagued against him and sworn into the 
 service of justice as sort of special constables to patrol 
 the lonely marshes. Incredible it all looks, yet you can 
 shudderingly guess what happened — the crocodiles refused 
 to oblige the murderer, and kept well up river near their 
 favourite promenade, the confluence. Next come the 
 quick currents on the scene as sort of Scotland Yard 
 detectives, and away they go at full speed, the three 
 corpses sailing straight for the murderer's own fishing-hut 
 hard on the shore. At dawn, out comes Eugene Aram 
 Africanus, to be confronted with his victims, the long 
 accurate voyage perfectly piloted by God Almighty's own 
 currents. Tableau ! N., S., E., and W. that murderer 
 looked before doing the deed, looked everywhere — except 
 UP. And, of course, this is only half of the story, for the 
 expectant hostess, seeing the days pass, suspects foul play. 
 There are currents on land as well as on water, and people's 
 tongues will wag. And just as the river currents brought 
 the corpses home to the murderer, so these land currents 
 
84 THINKING BLACK 
 
 of gossip brought the charge home to him too — was ever 
 man so hemmed in by a fence of his own contriving ? 
 
 TT w tP 
 
 The monkeys, scared off our route, are rare as 
 small : you must push East with us to the Lufira Valley 
 to see their frolics. There it was I found a w^hole town 
 in the terror of a monkey battle, big yellow fellows who 
 stand up to a man and fight him. With all the ready 
 resources and fine tact of his tribe, this long-tailed monkey 
 apes the biped in many things, particularly the deft 
 breaking off a stick to thrash a man. Yonder in the 
 dark grove of trees fringing the cornfields, the whole 
 yellow regiment have mobilised for three days' campaign 
 — sort of anti-corn-laws crusade, call it. The trouble is, 
 however, that in monkeydom they are not all birds of 
 a feather who so flock together, and when they are not 
 fighting the natives they are having a wild time together, 
 monkey vei'sus monkey. One chap, two inches taller or 
 two ounces heavier than his fellow, must have a wipe at 
 his junior — the old tale this, that the common attraction 
 drawing them together makes them less attractive to each 
 other. Beaten off a hundred times from the ripening 
 corn, there they are with a chastened optimism still 
 entrenched in the grove for a night sortie, and the moon 
 high in the west will see a victory the sun denied them. 
 The field-owners are so philosophic over this annual 
 attack tliat they call it the monkeys "tithing the corn." 
 Followed up to their grove, these animals know so well 
 thQ rules of the game, that they greet the negroes \vitl\ 
 
"BORING IN " FARTHER 85 
 
 showers of stoues, some of which strike home. But there 
 is a monkey ambulance idea, the most human touch of 
 all. When a negro wounds his monkey with an arrow, 
 in a jiffy the army-surgeon of the quadrupeds whips up 
 the wounded monkey, spits vigorously over the spot, tears 
 off a morsel of bark from a tree, and rubs in the resultant 
 medicine, spitting and rubbing again and again for a 
 cure. 
 
 But the biter often gets bit in this business, and 
 during the lean days of famine I found Master Monkey 
 himself make excellent emergency eating : have enjoyed 
 dozens of them soaked in banana vinegar. Nevertheless, 
 a long good-bye to monkey stew. Never no more. The 
 last I shot got his bullet in the breast ; but standing bolt 
 upright, he tragically put his hand on the red oozing 
 blood, and three times thrilled me by pointing indignantly 
 at his wounds. Like a K.C. for the prosecution, " J" ac- 
 cuse,'' those three mute but eloquent appeals to his 
 wounds stabbed me with remorse. To recall the re- 
 proachful glances from the large, liquid, mild eyes of a 
 dying antelope is bad enough, but here is something with 
 vastly more sting in it. Another and cuter monkey 
 avoided death and the subsequent dinner by — what do 
 you think ? — point-blank theatrically refusing to be shot. 
 Seeing the gun levelled at him, he puckered his brows 
 with incredulity, and waving his arms with indignation 
 defied the hunter to commit such an unheard-of crime. 
 " Me ? who ever killed my kind ? " he seemed to say. 
 Needless to add, down came the unshot barrel, and off 
 
86 THINKING BLACK 
 
 stalked Mr. Monkey, an easy winner. Why not? He 
 alone of all the forest fauna has learned the law of the 
 lever : he alone uses a stick to prise open a box-lid. 
 
 I wonder, in a way, if these negroes learn their gestures 
 from the local nionkeys. Amid all the jabber of rival 
 dialects the best because most eloquent sort of lingo is 
 this lan2;uao;e of nes-ro gesture, arms waving in the wind 
 like semaphores. Not the zigzag movements of an 
 excited Frenchman this, nor yet the impoverished ex- 
 pedients of deaf-mutes : here, I say, you have a serious 
 vocabulary of gesture, with deep abstract ideas stinging 
 you with sarcasm. The mechanics of African speech 
 this, so to speak ; the pulley and lever and screw of 
 conversation. that magician wave of the negro hand ! 
 With it they demand, they promise, they call, refuse, 
 interrogate, admire, reckon, confess, repent, express 
 fear, express shame, express doubt, instruct, command, 
 unite, encourage, swear, testify, accuse, condemn, acquit, 
 insult, despise, defy, disdain, flatter, applaud, bless, abuse, 
 ridicule, reconcile, recommend, exalt, regale, gladden, com- 
 plain, afflict, discomfort, discourage, astonish, exclaim, 
 indicate silence, and what-not ; with a variety and multi- 
 plication that keep pace with the tongue. And yet we, 
 the progeny of John Bull, dare to talk for hours with 
 hands down in the pits of our pockets ! Take, for instance, 
 such an everyday thing as the pointed finger thus : ^" 
 What is the true African idea of such a gesture ? Well, 
 here's a thing so deeply abstract that it could drown you 
 in its depths of irony. Certainly you will be very chary of 
 

 A TYPICAL "MOP" HEAD-DRESS. 
 
"BORING IN " FARTHER 87 
 
 pointing your finger in future. For in this action what 
 do you do if not point 0')ie finger only at the black man, 
 and three at yourself ? So ho ! you are trebly as bad as 
 the man you point at. Else, why point one only at him 
 and bend back three on yourself? Here, then, is a gesture 
 you must solemnly schedule in your lexicon as The- 
 Hypocrisy - so - vile - that - it- accuses - another - of - an - evil - it - 
 itself-possesses-three-times-stronger.^ The moral of all 
 this is that the Missionary who goes round an African 
 village pointing his accusing finger at the negro ^° is 
 really accusing himself in a three-to-one degree. Are 
 they ungrateful ? Then we the finger-pointers are trebly 
 so ^". Do we warn them to forget not all His benefits ? 
 Then our very gesture is a threefold warning to do 
 likewise. 
 
 {Later. ) 
 Cut ofi" from your nearest shop by hundreds of miles, 
 what a fuss there is before you shoot supper. Emerging 
 on our last stream for the day, we find it, not flowing, but 
 only dilly-dallying through a green meadow dotted all 
 over with red buck. Corresponding with, but by no 
 manner of means resembling, an English butcher's shop, 
 these qui vive antelopes out on the plain are the only 
 chance we have of filling our pots for suppor. A sort of 
 local " penny in the slot " meat-machine this, warranting 
 rich, red cutlets. Only instead of the unknown penny, you 
 slip a cartridge into the slot of your rifle and, click ! drops 
 dead your antelope. So much, and no more, for the local 
 
 2 |e> 1 I ! 1 ! ! 1 
 
88 THINKING BLACK 
 
 meat-shop ; now for your Luban bedroom. Yonder it is 
 hidden discreetly on the edge of a thicket in the same old 
 sixpence of a hamlet built on pestilential soil, and there, 
 in the dust, we must sleep the sleep of the just. The 
 deepening darkness, however, forces us to postpone our 
 supper-shot till the morrow, and lying down genuinely 
 "meat hungry" we dream of a morning fry of juicy 
 venison "fixings." The sun rose, and so did we ; but our 
 brave butcher's shop has vanished in the night, dashing 
 for dear life. For in the moonlight (" There goes our 
 breakfast," thought I), wufF! wufF! came a pack of jackals 
 scurrying through the meadow, chasing those antelopes 
 for their lives ; miles and miles they pant, heaving flanks 
 and gaping, dribbly mouths telling how terror-struck are 
 the buck. 
 
 Nothing reminiscent of England here ; no copse and 
 hedgerow, no down and moor, no slate roof and grey 
 spire ; a wilder, denser look everywhere, and just so 
 much more interesting. Farewell the gas, glare, and 
 paint of thy shops, Albion ! Shops, did I say ? The 
 African never dreamed the shop-idea, and only very 
 grudgingly will he be so kind as to barter you an evening 
 meal, kind for kind. But — shop or no shop — fish I want 
 and fish I resolve to have, for their tell-tale bones are 
 strewn all over the town. The Chief tried to brazen the 
 matter out, but with stony severity I met his every no, 
 no, no, with my sanguine yes, yes, yes. " All right," said 
 he wearily, " if fish you must have, fish I must find, so 
 just wait till I poison some for you." Right off" he picks 
 
"BORING IN ' FARTHER 89 
 
 the beans, then powders them with a pestle, then shuts 
 off an arm of his river, throwing this poison-powder 
 therein, then in half an hour, behold ! fifty white-bellied 
 fish floating dead to order in the poisoned pool. Fish wo 
 wanted, and fish we get. But not now — by no means 
 now. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 Eastward Ho ! 
 
"I hungered for Hell. I pushed into the midst of 
 it in the East End of London. For days I stood in 
 those seething streets, muddy with men and women, 
 drinking it all in and loving it all. Yes, I loved it 
 because of the souls I saw. One night I went home 
 and said to my wife : ' Darling, I have given myself, 
 I have given you and our children to the service of 
 these sick souls.' She smiled and took my hand, 
 and we knelt down together. That was the first 
 meeting of the Salvation Army." 
 
 General Booth. 
 
 " But all through the mountains, thunder-riven. 
 
 And up from the rocky steep, 
 There arose a cry to the gate of Heaven, 
 
 'Rejoice! I have found My sheep!' 
 And the angels echoed around the throne, 
 'Rejoice! for the Lord brings back His own.'" 
 
 911 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 Eastward Ho! 
 
 T N whichy at last, the reader is up and 
 off over the Kwanza River, thereby 
 taking the formal " header " into the 
 Far Interior. 
 
 TO push far beyond the Kwanza from the seaboard 
 means that vast savannahs are encountered that 
 could easily swallow a hundred missions. Thousands 
 of miles rolling ahead, and all guiltless of gates and hedges ; 
 a land that could swallow up millions and still wait open- 
 mouthed for more. Scarcely one lock and key in the 
 land, the usual means of opening a door being the 
 butt-end of a gun. Rather like Sir Thomas More's 
 " Utopia" this : did he not stipulate that no door in his 
 ideal State should be locked ? For years and years, fancy 
 sleeping with unlocked doors in Africa : how does this 
 tickle the conceit of England with its bolts and bars ? In 
 one backward glance you see that England as a parish is 
 only a spoilt and petted child of privileged preaching. 
 Your roots are merely in a flower-pot, and not in a real 
 roomy soil. How diff"erent the feeling when this wide, 
 
94 THINKING BLACK 
 
 weary Africa begins to open up before you in yawning 
 expanses of Gospel silence! But note withal a curious 
 thing. This advancinor into Africa seems to have a 
 strange reciprocal effect on a new-comer. Day by day, 
 what in fact is happening is that Africa invades you a 
 metaphoric mile, the Dark Continent flooding your insular 
 English being at every pore. The first thing to haunt 
 the Missionary, for instance, is the silent sarcasm in the 
 relative disparity of mileage, Africa versus England ; and 
 the mental map you find yourself making of the huge 
 land has always at the bottom corner an ironical inset 
 of " England on the same scale." To make a good picture, 
 remember, you must come back far enough to catch 
 the true focus, and here in the black bush we certainly 
 seem to see our tiny, much-divided England in true 
 perspective. 
 
 Let me say it a second time — that 16th of August will 
 ever remain a red-letter day among our African dates — 
 we crossed the Kwanza River. For here is our real 
 Rubicon, the great line of tribal cleavage, and at this 
 point we take the technical "header" into the Far 
 Interior. So sharp, indeed, this line of demarcation 
 that the first native you meet on the off-bank is labelled 
 "a heathen or Gentile" by his own pot-black brother the 
 Bihean. Ochingangela is the term, and there is sting 
 in it. Curious solidarity of the race this preaches, for 
 here we discover the black sons of Adam to be such born 
 Pharisees that each African tribe thinks its neighbour 
 only a coarse "Gentile" mob. Tit for tat, right across 
 
EASTWARD HO! 95 
 
 Africa, and thence right round the globe, these taunt 
 names are passed along the line, each tribe sporting its 
 rags of righteousness at the expense of the other. Of 
 course it is always the next man who is the alleged 
 "bad 'un," nay, never, never No. 1. The Bihean eats 
 doo^s, and the Luban eats snails, therefore each reviles 
 the other on this touchy point of tribal diet. The true 
 trade-mark this, of all negro Pharisees — 
 
 " Compound for sins they are inclined to. 
 By hating those they have no mind to." 
 
 The Luban, in order to eat man more comfortably, calls 
 outsiders Vahemba ; ask him if he eats " man," and he 
 will say, " Oh no ! I do not eat man ; I only eat Yahemba." 
 That is to say, only the Luban is a man, and a Gentile a 
 Muhemba. No random idea this taunt title, if you please, 
 for you may choose your coast of entrance, East or West, 
 and find Africa full of a Pharisee who never saw Jerusalem. 
 The abrupt first day's climb of the West Coast or the 
 gradual ascent of the Zanzibar side in the East ; yes, 
 choose either, for the whole world is akin. First comes 
 the sleek Swahili man, as black and as negroid as any. 
 Now in his raw estate was he not altogether lighter than 
 vanity, and did not the Arabs from Muscat call him a 
 Kaffir ? And did he not meekly and mildly swallow the 
 dose without a murmur ? And being immensely pleased 
 with his own dear self, does not this pride in himself make 
 the usual demand on the " other " man ? Therefore, being 
 a Pharisee of the good old international stock, he, scorning 
 
96 THINKING BLACK 
 
 a contaminating touch, dubs all Interior natives beyond 
 the pale " Wasenshi," the flouting glance of the negro eye 
 being the best lexicon-meaning of the word. 
 
 On and inward we travel, following our " will o' the 
 wisp," ever following but never finding the " heathen " 
 man of our quest. The Munyamweshi, for instance, is 
 ostensibly one of Mr. Arab's " Wasenshi," but this burly 
 Interior man denies identity — phew ! the imaginary 
 envelope has been misdirected evidently. Take this man, 
 now, for a guide to find the unfindable "heathen" and 
 note what befalls you on the westward journey. Himself 
 called a Musenshi by the snob Swahili, he too swallowed 
 the dose meekly as mildly, and now prepares the potion 
 for the next man. Listen to this often chanted word 
 Munabushi he is using, with a lordly sweeping gesture ; 
 don't, please, yawn as I tell you that this is the same old 
 sing-song of Pharisaism, heathenising everybody except 
 himself. And so our old friend " Barbarian " rolls on and 
 on, black tit answering black tat with mournful monotony, 
 for every Roland an Oliver, for every Quid a Quo. What ! 
 even the cannibals ? Yes, even the Lubans do not diff'er ; 
 for across their Mupaka, or tribal border, they throw the 
 epithet " uncircumcised " at all comers ; Muhemba! is the 
 shot they fire at you. 
 
 Reflection : The Missionary in j^i'^aching does not 
 need to dig up the famous old fossil Pharisee of Jerusalem 
 as a relic of antiquity. He has the real and genuine thing 
 all around. 
 
EASTWARD HO! 97 
 
 {25th August.) 
 
 Do we sleep in tents ? Nay, but we creep into our 
 
 tiny grass huts at sundown, and roll out our rugs on a 
 
 Kobert-the-Bruce mattress of fresh grass or leaves. Far, 
 
 far cosier than a flapping tent, the wildest tornado in the 
 
 night roars past, leaving you snug asleep in your grass den. 
 
 Contrast a poor " Edgington " rocking in the gale like a 
 
 ship at sea, the fly ballooning in the breeze. Besides, the 
 
 wild wind swishing through, with the rattle of the rain on 
 
 the tent, rousing you out of sleep. The necessary fireless- 
 
 ness of a tent, too. Therefore for snugness plus security 
 
 plus the faggot fire in it, give me a grass hut. In a few 
 
 minutes you can get snug with tho knowledge of an old 
 
 campaigner, and your weary carriers have the same jaded 
 
 joy. I heard one of these drop his load at sundown, 
 
 saying : — 
 
 " Hurrah ! welcome, night I 
 I don't need to carry the night." 
 
 But don't misunderstand, please ; I am only arguing for a 
 roadside hole to sleep in, and not a house as domicile. 
 For years — and more of this anon ^ — we have fought the 
 negro on this housing question with almost incredibly 
 successful results. Their average beehive hut is a 
 verminating hole, a den of disease, and indeed the most 
 valuable characteristic of that heathen hut is just this 
 impossibility of living in it : it drives you into the fresh 
 air. Prefer the hut, and you will be bitten all night by 
 large fat but need we discuss the exact zoological 
 
 * See p. 445 post. 
 
98 THINKING BLACK 
 
 designation of these creatures ? These pests are legion, 
 and what with our own creeping pace of travel by day, 
 coupled with these other creeping things by night, I 
 dreamed two nights in succession a curious jumble of 
 a dream — a vision this of a large roomy railway station 
 placarded all over with monster advertisements, *' Keating's 
 Powder." The railway, one opines, stood for a rebuke to 
 our caravan's creeping pace, and "Keating's" was — well, 
 for the other creepers. 
 
 But " he jests at scars who never felt a wound," and I 
 would hereby emphasise the fact that a tent is next to 
 necessary for the inclemencies of the rainy season travel. 
 Even as early as the 9th of July surprise rains caught me 
 in a forest with not a yard of canvas for cover and not one 
 straw of grass for a thatch. The annual grass fires only 
 the other day had roared through the land, licking up 
 every stock of long grass suitable for hut-thatching — 
 all, all swept off the face of the country, only green 
 leaves remaining, under which we crouch for shelter. 
 Down pours that ruthless rain, until the most promising 
 of fires soon goes clean out, — first red, then yellow, then 
 the bleak little blue flames, your firewood finally ceasing 
 to smoke. What next ? — muse on your miseries ? Why, of 
 course, sing : — 
 
 " It ain't no use to grumble or complain, 
 'Tis just as cheap and easy to rejoice ; 
 When God sorts out the weather and sends rain, 
 Why ! rain's my choice." 
 
 However, even an African cannot sing for eisjht hours, 
 
EASTWARD HO! 99 
 
 and in fact, a few hours later, misery is depicted on his 
 plucky black face, for he sees no prospect of an evening 
 meal ahead. Everything for miles around soaked and as 
 unignitable as asbestos. Caught in the rain, and five 
 miles in the rear, my poor old bed-man is sounding the 
 depths of desolation, crouching under a leaky umbrella- 
 like tree, the dark night settling down on him in the 
 cheerless forest, sans fire, sa7is food, sans hope. Philo- 
 sopher to the last, this old man could even defend that 
 pertinacious pour lashing him in fury. "We had a 
 race for it," said he, "the rain and I, but the rain got 
 home first." This July downpour, however, is quite rare, 
 and the Garenganze rule is that only after October the 
 African sky is too damp a ceiling to sleep under. Blue, 
 serenely blue, for a solid six months, here is a sky never 
 once out of temper, never once sulky and sour like your 
 English one. 
 
 Have we tinned provisions ? Not a box. We make 
 old Africa produce its coarse meal — remarkable neither 
 for its quantity nor quality — and nolens volens, on this 
 repellent " mush " one dares to dine. No cook on earth 
 could make what might be indulgently called a loaf out 
 of this meal, and in order to manipulate that sodden cereal 
 properly what was needed was the far subtler mysteries 
 of a magician, not a cook. (Ladies may well smile at this 
 statement, for as a matter of fact the deft white fingers 
 of the first lady to penetrate the Interior made delectable 
 pancakes with this very meal !) With a daily diet cut 
 down almost to the level of a black slave's, our imperious 
 
100 THINKING BLACK 
 
 appetite makes us long to seize this Africa by the throat 
 and wring a few of its menu secrets from it. But, alas ! 
 Africa, beyond the boast of a heady, frothy beer, has no 
 culinary secrets to hide. In later days another of the 
 impatient expedients was the boiling of triumphant bush 
 dumplings, " Jack Homers," for if you put in your thumb 
 you could not pull out the proverbial plum. " Go to ! let us 
 have a ' sinker,' " was the pathetic prophecy of indigestion 
 ahead. Nevertheless, ours it is even here to build an 
 Ebenezer by each of these cookery cannon-balls, and to 
 record thankfully that we who did partake of them are 
 still alive and well. So unlike Paul in all our other 
 ways, it is delightful for us to think that just here we 
 have stolen a march on him — I mean that, unlike our- 
 selves, Paul never left his natal climate zone or average 
 national dietary, 
 
 (2Qth August.) 
 Day by day, this African looking through you like 
 glass. Day by day, that relentless negro stare. Thus 
 you see us confronted with a painful and even awful 
 aspect of this winning of first-generation Africans for 
 Christ : I mean the innocent way they take you for their 
 walking and talking Bible : "an epistle, known and read 
 of all men." They read you off like a page of large easy 
 print and come to quick calculating conclusions. At least 
 Mr. Aboriginal has two eyes in his head, and behind the 
 said eyes he has just enough brains to suspect that a 
 Missionary's life and lips should agree. " So we preached 
 and so ye believed " is only half of the story, for they copy 
 
EASTWARD HO i 101 
 
 you m toto, the very gesture and the twang reproduced 
 with a fearful fidelity. Quite unconscious of the trend of 
 the thing, you have in Africa hundreds of little groups 
 who are unwittingly " the Smithites " and " the Jonesites " 
 and " the Brownites," according to the varying names and 
 fads of their various and varying Missionaries. 
 * m ^ 
 
 A vile negro calling you " Lord God ! " is a 
 reminder that the deepest wound a Missionary regularly 
 receives in Africa is when his good is evil spoken of. 
 Take the late sainted Benjamin Cobbe as an example. 
 Here was a holy man sent from God, if ever God sent a 
 man to the Garenganze. Welcoming him to the country, 
 I met him at the Lualaba crossing, a white, fragile-looking 
 traveller, with a Pauline gleam in his eye. " Have come 
 to pay my debt ! " said he, with a winning smile, and 
 there you have the whole story in two words — that white 
 fever face trying, but failing, to kill that glad smile. 
 This Africa of ours, mark you, is far too captious on the 
 subject of wdiat kind of body you bring into it — the same 
 sorry Africa that cares not one little bit whether you 
 have a soul at all. 
 
 And so, short and sharp was the course Cobbe ran, 
 for it is quite true what the forest proverb says : ** The 
 straightest trees are the first felled." Calm and cultured, 
 he was not one of the boisterous *' Oh-be-joyful ! " sort of 
 saint, yet did he walk with God, and got the heavenly 
 face. His motto w^as : " To grow up, you must grow 
 down " ; and a fine thing, indeed, God got out of him. 
 
102 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Watch the sequel. This holy man, if you please, had 
 drunk so deeply of God's wine of joy — the new wine that 
 came to him last in life — that it kept him going at high 
 pressure right on to the end. The new wine, in fact, was 
 busily at work breaking up his old bottle of a body, for 
 when these two meet in Africa then one of the two must 
 be lost, but that one thing will never be the new wine — 
 that is hid with Christ in God. So the frasrrant saint 
 died at his post, the " old skin bottle " broken in a ferment 
 of fever. Africa got the holy dust, and God received him 
 into glory. He foresaw it all — saw certain death ahead, 
 yet resolved to pay his debt to the heathen. So endeth 
 Phase No. 1. 
 
 Now, far from this being a de mortuis nil nisi homim 
 panegyric, here we come to the curious sequel. I have 
 called his a fragrant life ; but as the years passed it began 
 to dawn on us that the perfume of Mr. Cobbe's piety had 
 stolen far out beyond our sphere. That gleam of the life 
 eternal so often seen to shoot out of his hazel eyes was far 
 more eloquent than long-winded speech. And, travelling 
 one day in Lubaland, I was appalled to find out that a 
 negro, whom I met, had promoted Mr. Cobbe to the 
 literal rank of a " god." A.fter a few exploring remarks, 
 I ferreted out from the sealed sanctuary of his black 
 breast a little private scheme of salvation he had concocted 
 for his own particular benefit. 
 
 And thus, even thus, did the uncanny thing run. 
 
 Yes, he had known Mr. Cobbe in the old days — 
 fragrant and holy in word and deed. The memory of 
 
EASTWARD HO! 103 
 
 the heavenly things he saw in this saint never left that 
 negro, and away he went back to Lubaland with " the 
 living epistle " graven on his mind. *' Look up, for we 
 are going up — and oh, so soon ! " was a fond phrase of 
 Cobbe's, so this negro thought much and long, and knew 
 that the saint had really gone to God. That thing he 
 had actually seen in him could not be killed by fever. 
 He had only died into glory as the stars die at sunrise. 
 Hence the daring idea of this poor benighted soul to 
 evolve a private religion of his own wdth Mr. Cobbe as 
 central " saviour." "Ah ! " said the negro, "when I am 
 in a fix in life this is what I do, I just send up a prayer 
 to Bwanna Cobbe as mediator, and he will arrange it, for 
 he has a big say with God." " He will pass it along to 
 God ; he will have a big say with God ! " Of course, I 
 righted his wrong theology. Of course, I deplored and 
 implored that this was the unkindest cut of all — that this 
 was stabbing him, not kissing him. But oh ! the bitter- 
 sweet reflection notwithstandino^ — this that a mere dust- 
 to-dust man should be chosen as a daysman between God 
 and his soul : " a living epistle " — a walking and talking 
 Bible. They saw — may I dare the phrase ? — the gleam 
 of the life eternal shooting out of his honest hazel eyes ; 
 they saiv, I say, and they believed in a man of God. 
 How much more will they believe in the Man in the 
 Glory, the Man who is Jehovah's Fellow ? 
 
 Little wonder that Paul could even hope that "much 
 more in his absence " the young church of Philippi would 
 prosper, for, like many an African Missionary, might not 
 
104 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Paul's princely personality attract too much of their gaze ? 
 Is this, too, the reason why Philip and the first negro con- 
 vert of this dispensation were so quickly separated from 
 each other ? At least neither Paul nor Philip gave them 
 a wrong start by permitting them to think that they 
 could lean on them long, for they soon left their young 
 converts. Certainly too much coddling of converts on 
 the Mission Stations has fostered sickliness of soul, the 
 flippant defence of many a backsliding black at the mines 
 or Bulawayo being that because there is no Mission there 
 can be no godliness. This poor parroty brand of black 
 is, alas ! too common, and resembles the famous parrot 
 out on the Tanganyika Plateau who changed masters and 
 manners twice. No. 1 was a trader who taught the 
 bird to swear, and No. 2 a Missionary who taught him to 
 sing, poor Poll muddling up the swearing and the sing- 
 ing in his old age — out of the same mouth blessing and 
 cursing ; therewith blessed he God, therewith cursed he 
 men. Like Rowland Hill and the drunken man who said 
 to him, " I'm one of your converts." " I believe you," was 
 Rowland's arch reply, " you look like my bungling work." 
 Far from such negroes having no religion, their Mission 
 veneer proclaims them to have too much of it — in fact, 
 the only sensible thing is to tell them that if their religion 
 does not change them, they should change it. For if 
 prayer does not surely make an African leave off sinning, 
 will not sinning surely make him leave off praying ? 
 Ignoring Christ's rule of sending out His disciples two by 
 two, these renegades generally go off alone and pay the 
 
A TYPICAL SOLDIER'S WIFE. 
 
EASTWARD HO! 105 
 
 penalty. For the same wind that blows out a candle, 
 only fans two faggots into a flame, and wisdom is thus 
 justified of her children. 
 
 [Later.) 
 
 Hats off to the African lady, she — brave heart ! — is a 
 wonder. Undeniably she is stamped sterling. The 
 negro may laugh at a woman because she has a few 
 ounces less brain than a man, but very often the daughter 
 of Eve makes up in muscle what she lacks in mind. 
 Witness, a woman at the salt-pans who killed her lion as 
 deftly as a man, howbeit the method was quite a la Mrs. 
 Beeton. Out on the salt-pans the big earthenware pots 
 are kept boiling all night, with someone lying out to tend 
 the fire. A widow she happened to be. Past midnight the 
 fires had gone low, and the lonely watcher awoke from her 
 doze to see a large lion on the opposite side of the pot 
 proposing to grab her. Slightly scared as all lions are at 
 a blinking fire, this very delay on the beast's part was the 
 widow's choice opportunity. Well, and what did that 
 homely housewife do if not drench the lion with the 
 scalding salt water — yes, drenched it dead ! Mrs. Beeton 
 could not have given clearer instructions how to scald 
 and salt a prize lion, and she was a local Luban heroine 
 for a week. 
 
 But that is only incident No. 1, and the curious coin- 
 cidence of the second afi'air is that a woman and her 
 water-pot are again the central facts of the history. This, 
 too, is a woman whose life is under a cloud : witness her 
 slinkinor off after sundown to draw water from the well. 
 
106 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Late hours, though, in Africa have their penalty, and just 
 as she stooped down into the well to draw water, behold ! 
 as in a mirror her own face in the same reflection with a 
 leopard's. It all happened in the lightning glance of an 
 eye, the leopard on the other side starting to spring on 
 her at the simultaneous second when she saw his head 
 mirrored with her own in the same pool. (And, re- 
 member, the only shield and buckler she possessed was 
 Mrs. Beeton's glory, a housewife's water-pot.) Well, 
 happily for the poor woman, she instinctively, on the 
 edge of the well, covered her body with this homely 
 utensil to break the leopard's spring across. And not in 
 vain. The success of this manoeuvre was triumphant. 
 Just enough to cow the beast a very little, this little 
 meant such a lot that the leaping leopard missed a foot- 
 hold by one important inch, fell down the well with a 
 splash — and now there is more need for the water-pot 
 than ever. Thus begins a long game of hide and seek, 
 woman above and leopard down that well. Once, twice, 
 twenty times, the woman and the leopard played at blind 
 man's buff down the hole, and every time the beast at- 
 tempts to climb the well, this negro Mrs. Beeton claps 
 her water-pot over the mouth of the pit, thus cowing her 
 enemy. All the time, of course, she has been shrieking 
 in the direction of the village, and at last some men run- 
 ning up reward her bravery in the spearing of the wild 
 beast. Yet this woman had only 2 lbs. 12 oz. of brain as 
 against the men's 3 lbs. 2 oz., but the margin lacking in 
 brain she made up in biceps. 
 
EASTWARD HO! 107 
 
 (29th August.) 
 Heat increasing as we push on and in, the quicksilver 
 hurrying up the glass towards grill heat by 10 a.m. At 
 daybreak taking up of the fragments of supper that 
 remain a pocketful, we are off on the wings of the 
 morning, pushing far ahead of our crawling caravan. 
 Chancing on a rippling river intercepting the trail, you 
 sit down on the shiny, moss-covered bank and perform a 
 much more serious toilet than your fugitive cat's lick in 
 the dark camp. {N.B. — A tooth-brush over a running 
 stream, this is the cream of all tramp joys.) Then, at 
 last, behold our crawling caravan emerge from a hurst, 
 the Union Jack bearer leading the way. As we have 
 given them the slip and pushed on betimes, this is our 
 first encounter with our own men, so when the Indian 
 file marches past each man has his morning to give, 
 followed by some droll remark. Then one perchance 
 starts a song, the whole line of leathery lungs taking up 
 the howling chorus : this particularly when at the end of 
 a long fagging journey. Sirs ! what singing, the whole 
 harmony not unlike the tune with which a rusty old 
 coal-cart tries to solace itself when crawling down a hill. 
 
 How do we travel, you ask ? Have we carts or horses 
 or donkeys ? No, we have none of these, howbeit a kind 
 English lady was so concerned about our delays that she 
 asked the touching question : " Did the wheel of your 
 cart stick in the mud?" Alas! the only "cart-wheel" 
 we have to do with is the aforesaid rut of that name, and 
 a few months of this gipsying on the road makes you 
 
108 THINKING BLACK 
 
 agree with Ruskin that railway travelling is not travelling 
 at all. It is merely being sent to a place, and very little 
 different from becoming a parcel. Your alternative to 
 tramping it is a lazy lotus life in a Portuguese 
 machila, wherein dozing is the retrograde rule. 
 Bowling along in your carriage and six (hammock and 
 six stalwarts) while the honest blacks are sweating it out. 
 Although a good ambulance arrangement, this humbling 
 hammock can easily make a man as lazy as he is limp and 
 lifeless. On the contrary, marching under vertical rays 
 is delightful up to the sixth hour. When, however, you 
 push for a camp eight hours off, all the pleasure goes out 
 of a tramp after that solemn sixth hour. The lovely 
 glimpses of the picturesque in the earlier and brighter 
 hours all vanish, leaving you dull and dead, a mere walk- 
 ing machine, unpleasantly conscious of a hole in one sock, 
 and discussing in your hot head how far to camp. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 "Own Up and Pay Up" 
 
"Christ the Son of God hath sent me 
 Through the midnight lands, 
 Mine the mighty ordination 
 Of the piercM hands." 
 
 * 
 
 "All Christians are altogether priests ; and let it be 
 anathema to assert there is any other priest than he 
 who is a Christian ; for it will be asserted without 
 the Word of God, on no authority but the sayings 
 of men, or the antiquity of custom, or the multitude 
 of those that think so." 
 
 Luther. 
 
 " You might as well attempt to measure the moon 
 for a suit of clothes as tell what sect some belong to." 
 
 George Whitefield. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 '' Own Up and Pay Up " 
 
 T/fy^ HEREIN the reader continues 
 the perilous process called 
 " boring in" and encounters along the 
 trail sundry sons of Belial. 
 
 BUT how ridiculous all this trekking seems in retro- 
 spect, whon we see to-day this same Central Africa 
 quickly becoming a gridiron of railways. Against 
 our weary retrospect of thirty-two months from England 
 to the Garenganze, Sir Douglas Fox now offers a prospect 
 of three days to the same goal from Benguella. Ah me, 
 as the curtain of memory lifts, it is incredible to think 
 that within two decades the pant and puff of the red-eyed 
 engine will be heard rumbling along our old trail. And, 
 remember, we are told that double band of steel linking 
 the Ocean with the Katanga will mean the commercial- 
 traveller stage of existence — ambassadors for Canadian 
 whisky, Scotch tweeds, English marmalade, packed in 
 the sweltering carriages and making the country hum. 
 Not far down our Congo the very cannibals who hurled 
 clouds of arrows against Stanley's canoes are to-day them- 
 
112 THINKING BLACK 
 
 selves firemen and engineers of the river steamboats, 
 perspiring over their engines with lumps of cotton waste 
 in their strong dirty hands. Malemba was one of them, 
 and I chatted with him to-day in our lingua franca, 
 Swahili. 
 
 {^Oih August.) 
 Watershed country as it is about here, this means 
 that the rivers have not yet time and place enough 
 to form yawning ravines, consequently bridging is easy 
 and almost nominal. Dead level as the land looks, you 
 soon discover that this very flatness is a mere artifice 
 and trickery. For here, under your very nose, great 
 river-systems are silently worming away in diametric 
 directions ; here is cradled the mighty Congo of the 
 future ; here, too, slumbers the source of the Zambezi : so 
 hypocritically small here, so haughty yonder. To a 
 Missionary there is Gospel as well as Geography in all 
 this, the same Gospel I preached later on when crossing 
 Kundelungu Range. Sharp on the watershed I halted 
 my men and preached a three minutes' appeal — a short 
 enough sermon, but if they practise all I preached they 
 will find it long enough. Standing by a tree, I showed 
 them how one half of the branches dripped rain that 
 flowed far West, while the Eastern branches shed away to 
 the Luapula. And there you have the very pointed 
 moral of their position, as good theologically as geographi- 
 cally — every man of them standing on the watershed of 
 life and called upon to make an irrevocable choice : one 
 momentous move this way or that meaning endless joy or 
 
"OWN UP AND PAY UP " 113 
 
 endless woe. Of all the dunces beneath the patient 
 heavens there is none like the man who denies that the 
 Gospel of God is Africa's true solace and salvation. Here 
 is a man who says he has gone to the extreme of sin, and 
 here is a Missionary saying that Christ has gone to the 
 extreme of atonement. What more does the sinner want ? 
 What more does the Saviour ? 
 
 The villages encountered are still of the same vermin- 
 ating pattern first met near the Coast. As clearly as the 
 shell of a snail indicates its species, so the Chokwe ^ has 
 his typical hut. Having no chimney, his roof is a long 
 needle-pointed spire, their protest this against the smoke 
 blearing their eyes. Hence height of roof to induce the 
 smoke to curl up inside, not outside, the cone. Experience 
 grows, however, and you soon see that more than mere 
 sounds of the forest are invading the negro home. For 
 taking another glance out of his ash-heap of a kraal, this 
 time, your nude negro saw, or rather did not see, one 
 straight line in Nature, so once again out of sheer servile 
 allegiance to his Nature-creed the crooked negro has a 
 crooked town, the black beehive huts scattered all over 
 in a most random manner. Now, as that hut is itself 
 only a clump of cut trees tied together with bark ropes, 
 even so he still drags in forest ideas into the stockade, and 
 the haphazard growth of a clump of trees is the planless 
 maze of this grass town. A lighted arrow shot into the 
 place would send it up in a blaze. 
 
 ^ Some years later the first to open in Chokwe were our American frieuda 
 Messrs. Loutitt, Maitland, and Dr. Morey. Then Mr. and Mrs. Taylor and 
 others followed and began farther North. 
 
114 THINKING BLACK 
 
 That old-as-Adam circular hut of his, be it noted, 
 is the seed plot of all his " thinking black " ideas, for when 
 natives gather in a meeting they crowd in a circle ; then, 
 in true sarcastic sequence, they think and talk in a circle. 
 The eye is circle No. 1, and looking out on the landscape 
 of life it is a case of like eye, like landscape, 360° every 
 time. He rambles round in a circle of speech in the same 
 way as he sees the circularity of seasons in Nature, or the 
 day and night cycle of sleeping and waking. His carved 
 stools and utensils are all circular, and he borrows from 
 Nature the idea that rotundity is the only safe shape of 
 things. A chief argued with me for a week that by 
 making a square house I had at once created four points 
 of near or remote breakage — a circle has no weak point, 
 so he argued. The fact is the whole prospective puzzle 
 in connection with our black man is, how to make him, a 
 round peg, fit into the square hole of civilisation. You 
 go roaming around Africa sighing for one straight line 
 and lo ! you find it not — a parable all this of black morals 
 as well as of black men. 
 
 {Slst August) 
 
 The sun-baked trail stretching ahead is still going due 
 East like a long snake, twisting and turning now to the 
 right now to the left with a whole foot-path philosophy 
 in the thing. Nor would you prefer it severely straight 
 like a Roman road, for this corkscrew with its secrets 
 ahead possesses all the pleasure that is born of accident 
 and surprise. You turn an ant-hill and know not what 
 will confront you ; squeeze through scrub, tlien out, pit-a- 
 
"OWN UP AND PAY UP " 115 
 
 pat with expectancy, on a green grassy glade. You know 
 not what is ahead, nor do you want to. Here your " think- 
 ing black" negro moralises once more, and insists that 
 this track of ours is like the way and walk of life. The 
 veil that covers the face of futurity is woven by the hand 
 of mercy. If you knew a month's happening ahead, you 
 would grow grey in a single night. Day by day in this 
 same cart-wheel rut, however, has a curious effect on you 
 the traveller : it gets on your brain, precisely as this 
 sinuous trail has made an equally sinuous African. He 
 gets a twist too. With chameleon consistency the negro 
 has utterly become like his own zigzag path ; it is his 
 way of doing things as well as his way of walking. In 
 speaking — say — this slippery native can only twist in and 
 out of an idea precisely as he twists along his path : 
 " Going, I went, and speaking, I spoke, and doing, I did," 
 being the average formula of your wriggly black. An 
 adjacent lion is called a " dog," and a friend asking a 
 friend to drink beer is vaguely invited to drink "water." 
 Hence the famous fact that our son of Ham will never 
 come straight to the point, but hedges and temporises — 
 " meandering to the point " he calls it. Depend upon it, 
 too, this gentleman has got to learn that a straight line 
 is the shortest in morals as in mathematics : is not their 
 twisted itinerary exactly like their twisted morals ? Why, 
 for example, is it that your savage prefers to take a long, 
 roundabout way in murdering his man, lingering and 
 lavishing the finest touches of the art of murder on him ? 
 Round the corner of the cook-house you can catch Mr. 
 
116 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Chef excruciatingly murdering your supper fowl, plucking 
 it while yet alive. The same boy's father, too, in killing 
 a prisoner would with a refinement of cruelty insist on 
 first digging out the heart. The same devious course of 
 devilry is seen when they catch an eagle raiding the 
 chickens. Oh yes, they release the captured culprit, 
 but it is only with one leg cut off, one eye gouged out, 
 then away the regal bird flies in misery, maimed for life. 
 Yet so daring are these vultures that, at Molenga's, one 
 successfully swooped down on the plate passing only a few 
 yards from cook-house to table and carried of^ the savoury 
 meat thereon ! 
 
 ^F Wf '^ 
 
 What next ? The ex post facto Chokwc " hungry 
 country " is a relative joy compared with the treat- 
 ment we receive from the Luvale people. The staple 
 product of this road-blocking tribe is a wealth of Rob 
 Roy bandits who live on loot. Squeezing through the 
 grass is a small concern compared with squeezing past 
 these stand-and-deliver ruffians. This is what the phrase 
 " boring in " means. Small ragamuffin sovereigns, 
 let us call them, generally this type of negro is the 
 greasiest and the dirtiest that ever defied soap. " Water 
 rots the skin," is their saying. Samikilenge at Peho is 
 the worst of the gang, then comes Kalunga Kameya, and 
 then old Kangombe. Every man of them nurses a private 
 grievance and demands " cash down " for seeing the light 
 of His Majesty's countenance. Most of their towns, too, 
 more prominent on the map than on the planet earth. 
 
"OWN UP AND PAY UP" 117 
 
 To judge from tlieir dirty appearance they seem, at one 
 time, all to have suftered from hydrophobia and never 
 completely recovered from the dread of water then in- 
 spired. These and many more form a band of black 
 rogues who fatten on honest men : witness Livingstone 
 in these very latitudes in 1854 and his perilous plight. 
 By way of temporising, a common proposal from these 
 road-blockers is a delay of some days for the Kasendo, or 
 blood covenant of friendship, between the travellers and 
 the lord paramount, a mere trick this, of course, " to 
 bleed us " in a dear double sense. The idea of this one- 
 sided covenant as unfolded is a sort of " Mutual Accommo- 
 dation Society Limited," and I assure you it is limited 
 — strictly so — our upstart Chief being sole beneficiary : 
 he wants everything, even a literal suck of your blood. 
 Every few miles means a new embarrassing case of a 
 blatant Kinglet demanding your money or your life, yet 
 most of these nobodies only dreamed in one night they 
 were kings, their proof of regal succession being as weak 
 and visionary as that of the Pope being the fabled 
 successor of Peter. But patience must be your pet virtue 
 in Africa, remember, and now, oh now, is the time to 
 produce your pet. Calico and beads are their £ s. d., but 
 mere current coinage is the least and last thing in their 
 despotic demands. Our prudent shabbiness, in fact, is a 
 necessary boon ; for they want our boots, want our shirts, 
 yea, they must have the only iron cooking- pot we possess 
 — perhaps. And all this under splitting vertical rays, 
 the precious dry season (quickly speeding past with our 
 
118 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Garenganze goal yet a long way off. These fine folks do 
 not measure time by means of little machines carried in 
 their pockets. No need in this easy land to catch train 
 or tram by a fraction of a second. There is not one time- 
 piece in the vast country, their only watch and eight-day 
 clock being the accurate sun who faileth never. To say, 
 therefore, that " punctually on the stroke of six " our caravan 
 moves out of camp is an error, unless you apply the phrase 
 to our slavers, who can only get their bondsmen off after 
 a sixth whack with a stick, " punctually on the stroke 
 of six," indeed. 
 
 {Sth September.) 
 But we have an anchor to windward all the time. 
 Here are your September and October rushing past, I 
 repeat, the punctual rains due at any time, like an express. 
 And here, too, are your hot Africa and hotter Africans 
 trying hard to make us a broken-spirited jumble of dis- 
 traction. But we meet our Eob Roy's hang-dog look with 
 the genuine and exultant retort that though indeed 
 empty-handed we are not empty-headed, and therefore 
 cannot give what we do not possess. Well, this demon- 
 strable denial of ours is, as I have said, a real anchor to 
 windward, for the African has a curiously hard-headed 
 way of judging things by practical proof But, mark you, 
 until in some way you have paid this man's demands, 
 normal relations with the tribe in food-buying are not 
 supposed to be established. You are boycotted, and 
 neither by charter nor barter can you get anything from 
 them. First things first is the idea in this preliminary 
 
"OWN UP AND PAY UP" 119 
 
 tribute wrangle, and the demand really amounts to the 
 astounding idea that we must pay for the very faggots 
 we break in the forest ; must pay for the very water we 
 drink ; yea, finally and fearfully, we must pay for the 
 very air we breathe. Pay for the very air we breathe, 
 and if we don't " stand and deliver," then — why, soon we 
 will be breathing no air at all. Ah, these road-blocking 
 days are the Missionary's terrible times, when the feelings 
 are at flash-point and not at all improved after a sleep- 
 less night of native drum-dancing. You seem to awake 
 with the feeling that you have not slept for a hundred 
 years, and with a complexion like uncooked pastry. 
 Content as these negroes are to drone through life, they 
 glory in thus blocking the road with their delusive 
 and abortive demands. 
 
 Let me introduce you to this fiery friend of ours, Mr. 
 Rob Ptoy. For a moment you think the whole thing 
 must be an optical illusion. A globular personage, with 
 the voice of Stentor and the build of Falstaff, here he 
 comes mincing along to the rhythmic music of tight new 
 boots — bought from the slavers. Personal remarks in 
 Africa are permissible, and you will perceive that Rob is 
 dressed in his Sunday best for the occasion, to wit, an 
 utterly abominable soldier's uniform, probably now entering 
 its teens. Fat and fifty, our friend is obviously bursting 
 for relief, for the rag-shop red coat is giving him a claret- 
 coloured face. With every button straining at its 
 fastenings, observe how the tight-unto-choking collar 
 makes his ox-neck overflow in waves of fat. After many 
 
120 THINKING BLACK 
 
 a strange vicissitude of fortune, and originally fitting 
 some thin, trig T. Atkins like a glove, this coloured coat 
 inflicting slow tortures is seemingly not at all adapted 
 to our bandit's middle-aged development. The head- 
 dress is quite as remarkable too as the nether garments. 
 H.R.H. as substitute for a crown walks carefully balancing 
 a caved-in No. 6 policeman's helmet on a No. 10 head. 
 But, alas ! the head can be empty that fills a hat. Look 
 now at that tall and gawky youth strutting at his side 
 wearing a wild waistcoat, a-graduating in the Luban 
 school of manners. This, be it known, is Rob Roy junior, 
 playing local "Prince of Wales" to his father's role of 
 Rex, an "heir-apparent" he, more heir-presumptive than 
 "heir-apparent," for his presumption is appallingly 
 apparent. Burton was right. Mere barbarism rarely 
 disgusts : it is the unnatural union of civilisation with 
 savagery that makes the gorge rise. The incongruities 
 are not grotesque enough to be amusing : they are merely 
 ugly and painful. 
 
 (Later.) 
 What, then, is this negro's programme for the day ? 
 " Drink beer, think beer," is the old African saying that 
 describes it all. For with tipsy hilarity he promises you, 
 by the graves of his ancestors, that you will be released 
 to-morrow ; but his precious promises are like proverbial 
 pie-crust, only made to be broken. Thus you see our 
 Rob Roy glorying in his old game of the blocked road, 
 his glory our shame. Each dragging day of delay he 
 celebrates with one of his all-night dances, the nude 
 
A PRbCUClOUS PRINCELING 
 
"OWN UP AND PAY UP " 121 
 
 celebrants roaring themselves hoarse under the fig-trees. 
 Though they dance in their nudity under a fig-tree, they 
 seem quite unconscious of the ancient application of fig- 
 leaves, and certainly they have more need of a covering 
 of fig-leaves than fig-trees. Enemy of daylight and 
 decent living, there goes the midnight noise of the drums 
 echoing to the roar of the dancing Luvale, and the native 
 proverb hits off" the dual emptiness of both drum and 
 drummer : " A drum only sounds because it is empty." 
 Nor is this music mellowed and harmonised by distance. 
 The native has his drum so near that it seems to be stuck 
 in your drum of the ear — a pandemonium of music. Be 
 vigilant, for this midnight drumming is on the same 
 principle (or lack thereof) that a band of thieves burgles a 
 London house while one of their "pals" plays an Italian 
 barrel-organ at the gate to draw ofi" attention. Again 
 and again, these Luvale folks have unthatched a hut 
 under cover of the noise and decamped with a truss of 
 calico. At Nalingombe we lost, not merely a bale of 
 calico, but also the next needy day of delay " talking " the 
 theft palaver — bale lost, day lost, temper lost. Tried in a 
 lull to barter some local curios, my predilection being for 
 combs and bead-work ; but they edged away, glancing with 
 open animosity, after almost closing with my ofi'er. Depend 
 on it, in Luvale a collector of curios seems to the native 
 to be himself the quaintest curio in his whole collection. 
 
 (ISth September.) 
 What is all the delay about? The answer is that 
 what we are really doing is " buying the road." You 
 
122 THINKING BLACK 
 
 cross one Coilantogle Ford sort of boundary only to find 
 that the Roderick Dhu you have just escaped has a dozen 
 cousins of the same ilk farther ahead. Often a coarse 
 English ballad is a truer snap-shot of African life than 
 more pretentious poetry, and if a coarse land needs coarse 
 description then here you have Luvaleland in modified 
 English rhyme : — 
 
 "There's a king on every ash-heap, 
 There's princes not a few, 
 There's a whole raft-load of potentates 
 On the road to Timbuctoo." 
 
 Thus you see the divinity that hedges every tiny chief 
 has to be propitiated with Ochivanda, or tribute, and the 
 galling fact is that this nobody has all your own men in 
 the hollow of his hand. He has marked you for his 
 lawful prey. Perceiving you in perplexity means that the 
 iron is now red-hot, so he strikes with a will and like a 
 wild one. " Keep the trail white for us to return " is the 
 catch phrase from your traitors, and at every turn they 
 deplore your lack of deep respect for all constituted 
 authority. They nag you and they jag you with the re- 
 minder that all the chiefs will loot any further transport 
 following us in, if we fail to make the path "white" by 
 paying exceptionally extortionate tribute. Proverb-logic 
 again routed us, and this time the reminder was that 
 "the key that opens is also the key that locks." Nor 
 was this all. Our Biheans rushed to more mad metaphor 
 to make us yield. " Look," said they, "at this long road 
 in from the Ocean : like the human body, lo ! what is this 
 
"OWN UP AND PAY UP" 123 
 
 road but the gullet ? Out yonder on the Atlantic sea- 
 shore you have the mouth open to receive supplies. Now 
 you white men (literally, "you big devils") are going 
 far into the stomach of Africa, but linking mouth and 
 'peptics' [Chifu) is this long gullet-way which must not 
 be blocked — block the gullet-trail and you will starve, for 
 the mouth is cut off from the stomach." Thus we sur- 
 rendered at discretion, swallowed the affronts in a 
 deplorably double sense, kept our mouths shut, and our 
 long line of supplies open. For what again saith the 
 proverb ? " If, exasperated one, you are tied up in 
 ropes, the more you tug, the tighter the knots become." 
 
 N.B. — In Africa a Missionary is like steel, no use if he 
 loses his temper. By every trick and device, the Devil 
 tries to lure from you your song, and the only safe man is 
 the Psalmist sort : My heart is fixed, I'll sing — i.e. I am 
 going in for singing as a habit of life in Africa. " The 
 happiness of duty " is a blessed old belief, no doubt, but 
 far, far better in Africa to reverse the motto and make it 
 run, " The duty of happiness." " Chance sparks kindle 
 chance tinder," runs the proverb, so beware ! 
 
 (Later.) 
 
 Mere "Bible and walking-stick" campaign as ours is, 
 no wonder the natives call us "The Softies." But again 
 and again it is Mr. Softie who gets them out of a hole. 
 For example, let me here record as legitimate history an 
 olive-branch victory farther East that opened the Luban 
 road. We are twisting along the trail, a great band of 
 Mweru-bound emigrants numbering nearly three hundred 
 
124 THINKING BLACK 
 
 souls. Very weary and very dreary that great crowd is ; 
 witness this worn-out mother whose baby was born to-day 
 on the long march. Born in the woods, this biped baby 
 is treated like a little antelope and must travel two hours 
 after he has seen daylight. Christened after the forest 
 that cradled him, this title clings to him all his life ; 
 imagine an English baby with no cradle but a travelling- 
 trunk, and travelling with the trunk as soon as it is born. 
 We are pushing on for a river camp before nightfall ; 
 some have snatched at a dry faggot, remembering the 
 needed fire ahead ; here and there mushrooms put in an 
 appearance for the prospective supper, but we are all 
 weary and pinched. Duck, a welcome sight in the 
 morning, is the last thing we want to see now, for a duck 
 means marsh, and marsh means weary wading, wet socks, 
 and a shiver-and-sweat fever. Afar — oh the music ! — the 
 voice of our terminal river begins at last to call, beckoning 
 us on, and at last we come out of the forest with a shout of 
 relief, for there ahead is our river — green Jordan, call it — 
 beyond which is the negroes' promised land of — of camp. 
 And soon we have negotiated the deep dark thing over 
 an acrobatic bridge, and soon the axes are out felling a 
 spacious bivouac. An odd enough company, to be sure, 
 for ten tribes are represented, which augurs not discord 
 but the contrary. In the old Mushidi capital stranger 
 met and mated with stranger, the man from the North 
 with the woman from the South ; and the family tie was 
 often shown to be the merest calico concern, wearing out 
 with the calico that bound it. Our camp every day is 
 
"OWN UP AND PAY UP" 125 
 
 like a good-sized village, the loud after-supper hum from 
 the fires being rather pleasant though a little bit noisy. 
 The sweep of stockade is fully 150 yards in circumference, 
 in the centre of which is my big hut, where I sleep with 
 my personal boys. This palisade is so built that it forms 
 at the same time the huts of the people, each man having 
 so many yards of ground to stockade before he joins on 
 with his neighbour, who comes to meet him half-way. 
 Only one gateway is allowed, owing to the dangerous 
 state of the forest, and, with all their instincts up in arms, 
 the men look out jealously that no one leaves a gap. It 
 is now broodingly dark, and most around the fires are 
 looking with a hungry, glassy stare at the supper-pots, 
 when a shrill w^iistle startles all — a shriek-whistle known 
 too sadly well ; and then ! And then, as a matter of 
 plain, unpleasant fact, some red toucan feathers appear 
 over our stockade. Everybody's jaw drops, and, in a 
 flash, w^e know that war is in the wind, red war that has 
 painted the African map from ocean to ocean. Where 
 then, to be definite, are we ? Into what trap have we 
 fallen? "Oh no," say the emerging warriors, "we have 
 nothing against you, but to-morrow ive begin." In a 
 word, we have put our foot in it, have arrived just on 
 the eve of a great inter-tribal battle, a wild Waterloo. 
 The old tale of the hereditary hatred of the clans and 
 the Highland Mac's sending round the fiery cross — fiery 
 feathers in this case. A long quarrel has been in soak 
 for years; boundaries have been dishonoured, clansmen 
 kidnapped, ivory tribute stolen ; and now at last for the 
 
126 THINKING BLACK 
 
 final argument of kings. And is God not going to have 
 a say in it all, the pitched battle raging itself out ? And 
 will they die like dogs without knowing that He has an 
 argument with both of them ? 
 
 Yea, here again (and blessed be our Rock !) we may 
 write on earth what God has written in heaven : Bible 
 diplomacy, olive-branch pleadings right through the 
 night, and with the day-dawn came the truce of God ; 
 a red sunrise to a "white" day. We were as bland as 
 they were bitter, but we won. This is how it was done. 
 Halving a group of elders, the one section went off to 
 preach peace in Chona's war-camp, while the other half 
 carried the olive branch into the rival Mac's. And 
 although at first they were greeted with a pelting storm 
 of refusals, the great armistice was at weary length assured. 
 Not a mere truce, not a patchwork peace, but a sterling 
 pact that has held on through nearly twice ten years, and 
 ensured an open Western road. These, be it known, are 
 the Luburi bog tribesmen, whom a whole park of artillery 
 could not dislodge from their amphibious retreat ; 
 "human otters" their title. So, even so, we open the 
 way, under God ; a few burning words of daysmanship, 
 a longer pleading for soul-escape as well as body-escape, 
 and lo ! the rainbow in the cloud. The Western road ! 
 What pioneer memories of the olden time are in the 
 name ; of weary days when we bored our way far, far 
 into the interior : yes, we purchased that long weary 
 trail, bought (with kind, not cash) a passage with our 
 meagre belongings, an old shirt here, an older pair of 
 
"OWN UP AND PAY UP" 127 
 
 trousers there — and so we moved on our pilgrim trail, 
 nightfall seeing us minus a rag or two and a day's march 
 nearer home. Fools for Christ's sake Whose is the 
 princedom of peace, we tried to meet all comers with a 
 Gospel smile, listened to their Rob Roy intentions, paid 
 their free-booters' levy as though it were Caesar's shekel 
 of silver, and laid up treasure in Heaven according to 
 Matt. vi. Even Rob Roy, I presume, comes under the 
 heading " There is no power but of God." Nor does one 
 find it difficult to wave a welcome olive branch in the 
 face of long-drowned tribes who are weary to death of 
 war's deluge. Peace has balm right round the globe, 
 and you bless the Prince thereof that such is your calling, 
 to bring men out of the midnight into the sunshine. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 Dark Doings in Luvaleland 
 
"To do as all men ever would, 
 Own no man master but their mood." 
 
 *• The fact is that the running of a tropical colony 
 is, of all tests, the most searching as to the develop- 
 ment of the nation that attempts it ; to see helpless 
 people and not to oppress them, to see great wealth 
 and not to confiscate it, to have the absolute power 
 and not to abuse it, to raise the native instead of 
 sinking yourself, these are the supreme trials of a 
 nation's spirit." 
 
 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 
 
 ^'In Africa the animalistic, self-indulgent white 
 man approximates yet nearer the animal; the 
 intellectually active, destitute of the stimulus of 
 conversation and encounter with diverse opinion 
 and nimble wits, becomes an intellectual fungoid." 
 
 Blackburn. 
 
 •30 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 Dark Doings in Luvaleland 
 
 T N which the veil being only partially 
 withdrawn^ the black man is seen 
 to have black manners. 
 
 (17th September.) 
 
 ALL these clays our old friend Latitude 1 2° is running 
 East and West on our right, more like a hand-rail 
 fencing us in than an imaginary map-line. So East, 
 endlessly East to the sun does our road run, that the way- 
 faring man though a fool shall not err therein. The rivers 
 are elusive and uncertain, wriggling across our trail for a 
 few minutes like a shining serpent, then darting off, lost in 
 the bush. Not so loyal Latitude 12°. Say, nearly as far 
 as Longitude 22°, it is a faithful friend all the way ; now 
 river, now jungle, now flats — but come river, or jungle, or 
 flats, the 12th parallel unifies them all. " Sourcing it" 
 is their participle that gives the geography of our route. 
 On our far left the baby Kasai is babbling like a brook, 
 and the 1st of September sees the far-flowing Lumese born 
 a little after we left Tenda. One day more and a sharp 
 turn East reveals the baby Luena, a poor trickle of liquid 
 
 131 
 
132 THINKING BLACK 
 
 mud made up of a few ponds linked together. Long 
 sandy slopes all the way, the green shoots of the rubber 
 root often the only speck of relief in the trail. Farther 
 back in Chokwe country the hills were huddled too close, 
 their V-shaped hollows giving quite a jolt. Only after a 
 long series of complex tumbles did we get out of it with 
 meal-bags that had been empty for two years — days, I 
 mean. But the pitcher that goes often to the water will 
 at last surely be broken, and at Kasenga one of our men, 
 a tough old roadster, lay down and died. Two days ago 
 he gave the warning that this travelling blend of jolting 
 and hunger would kill him, the honest hazel eyes of the 
 fellow proclaiming that his was no shuffling cowardice. 
 So there in the dead of night we were forced to dig up the 
 floor of his hut and bury him like a dog, lest the natives 
 got wind of it. Only dare to die in their country, only 
 dare to cover the face of your dead on " ashes to ashes " 
 principle, and at once they pounce down on you with the 
 old nagging lawsuits. They don't bury their dead, oh 
 no ! they, grandees excepted, merely stick the corpse up 
 in the forest between two trees, and they demand damages 
 for all burial. 
 
 Read this. Albeit prompt payment is the Luvale 
 theory of lawsuit assessment, their excessive extortion 
 really frustrates quick settlement : witness a man to-day 
 dunned for the debt of his great-great-grandfather. Yet 
 generations ago the first instalments were paid to account, 
 and dribbling down the years it has been pay ! pay ! pay ! 
 all the time, "the white chalk" acquittal (receipt) denied. 
 
DARK DOINGS IN LUVALELAND 133 
 
 "No chalk, no clearance" is their formula. Milonga! 
 Milonga ! is the cry, and off all the young lads are carried 
 by their uncles to go the round of the courts and learn the 
 tricks of legal blood-sucking. Like a small pea in a very 
 big pod you have a mere boy trained in word-wriggling 
 and munching mouthfuls of legal terminology. This is 
 the reason why a Missionary can scarcely keep a bright 
 young scholar about him. The uncle is sure to turn up 
 and drag him off, willy nilly, for this legal education. If 
 you expostulate, the retorting relative only expectorates, 
 and away they sail out through the Mission gate, the 
 uncle dragging the nephew like a big steam-tug making 
 off with a dainty sailing yacht. No new ideas are allowed 
 to build their nests in the young Luvale's brain. Nature, 
 always fertile in analogies, gives a good example of all this 
 in the dozens of dogs nosing among the garbage of their 
 own filthy towns. Even so, Mr. Luvale rakes up the 
 mud-heaps of memory, and at last having found his quibble 
 as a dog his bone, he straightaway bows to his victim with 
 awful politeness : Linga ! Veta ! 
 
 Nevertheless, prompt payment is the tribal ideal, and it 
 is only in the " death damages," or Chipeshi, they hit on a 
 gruesome expedient to make a man pay up. A husband, 
 say, is bereaved of his wife, so he must be mulcted heavily 
 by the relatives ; calico, goats, and oxen all going to 
 appease their counterfeit wrath. Now is their cruel 
 chance for " cash down," so, like Sinbad the Sailor, they 
 shut in the man with his conjugal corpse and let the days 
 drag past to their extortions. Meanwhile, of course, rapid, 
 
134 THINKING BLACK 
 
 revolting mortification is going apace, and weeks after it 
 is all over, debts paid, " white chalk acquittal," he emerges 
 to the sunlight. Semi-starved, too, all the time, only 
 water and gruel his allowance. So very sad, bad, and 
 mad is it all that every tiny detail is clutched at to make 
 delay : " We bury only bones," is their phrase (Natu 
 mbila vifuhwa kaha). 
 
 This bereaved husband, for instance, had a long pre- 
 liminary wrangle with his kinsman in the mere notifying 
 of his wife's death. For, be it known, " to notify " means 
 that you send a personable bit of live-stock, a goat but 
 preferably an ox, and only thus can the news of such an 
 unlikely thing as this death get home to the man's intelli- 
 gence. Sent a big goat in the first instance, this kinsman 
 looked askance at the animal and said that its very small- 
 ness told him his cousin had not much wrong with her — 
 dead she certainly could not be with only a goat to 
 announce it. People don't notify deaths per post-card 
 even in Luvaleland, and to send a iiuge ox is the African 
 equivalent to sending a black-edged mourning letter. A 
 goat is a mere post-card. Here, then, is his chance to 
 make vexatious delays, the preliminary trouble being how 
 to get the relatives even to believe there is a death at all. 
 A full week has run its course before they even dream of 
 gathering for the Chipeshi (wake ?), the initial fees of 
 notification being now paid. Then, one by one, the 
 bereaved kinsmen trickle in, all armed to the teeth, all 
 vulpine in greed, and all resolved at besting each other in 
 their demands. A mere cousin though he be, the long 
 
DARK DOINGS IN LUVALELAND 135 
 
 list of items in his funeral bill is stolidly fought for day 
 by day : " death damages," the most complicated of all. 
 For — and note this — death to a negro is indeed dissolution 
 of life's pleasures as well as dissolution of a mere mortal 
 body, and all the details of that woman's wedded life must 
 now be paid for. Of course, she cooked his food, so now 
 for paying the total cookery bill. She fetched firewood, 
 milled the meal and drew water, now's the time to pay up, 
 ay, pay for every drink of water and every faggot of 
 fire. Mark you, pay up for every item to every kinsman, 
 all at once and once for all. One item in this incredible 
 invoice naturally makes you laugh, for the thing itself is 
 about laughter : " To the much laughter you enjoyed for 
 years when conversing with your late spouse, our legal 
 cousin — total value, one goat." Not much to laugh at 
 now. And so on and on, the post-mortem invoice runs, 
 many a shameless (because nameless) item haggled over 
 on a money basis, £ s. d. as to its very initials being 
 suitably equivalent to Law Suit Damages. Alas ! the 
 higher you ascend in the social scale the lower things sink, 
 the worse and wilder the extortion. The great Queen her- 
 self, Nyakatoro, is the lewdest of the lot, and the occasion 
 of her grandchild's death was the scene of a loathsome 
 Chipeshi. Weeks and weeks dragged past, but no burial, 
 the mourners forced to nurse the putrefying corpse on 
 their knees on the Luvale " we bury only bones " principle. 
 Meanwhile, the shameless Queen is conducting an inquiry 
 into the death of her Musukvlu, a " who-killed-cock- robin " 
 sort of investigation this, in which she unblushingly 
 
136 THINKING BLACK 
 
 reveals the names of her maDy paramours, all of whom 
 must DOW pay damages for the grandchild's death. 
 
 TP •K' ^ 
 
 Here is a strong healthy stream we must tackle. 
 And being strong, not sickly, how can you expect it to 
 be always confined to its bed ? Winding and rewinding 
 like a watch-spring, we follow the twists of our river 
 round the great S, then out we go together, both 
 river and traveller, out on a pancake plain. More 
 marsh than plain this becomes, alas ! for its old orderly 
 up-stream flow is now impossible ; and although no 
 doubt, like ourselves, this river entered on this plain 
 with the very best intentions, the flat bankless 
 marsh has now forced the poor stream to break all his 
 good up-stream resolutions — a floundering bog, nothing 
 less. Yea — and note this, gentle reader — we too end 
 in bog, just as sadly and badly. For you cannot canoe 
 it, so you resort to the " double man " of exploration — 
 that is to say, aloft is your traveller, pickaback like a 
 Japanese acrobat, on his negro steed, hands clutching at 
 the woolly pow, legs twisted tightly round his neck. 
 Not that this " double man " is doubly a man — oh ! no, 
 for the more inches you go up in the world the lower you 
 descend both in imagination and in reality. Each groping 
 step in the pitchy, stinking mud sees you nervously 
 clutching at the negro's head, knees driven into the 
 neck and ever mindful of the white knight's fate in 
 " Alice's Adventures," to wit, a beautiful parabolic curve, 
 head first. And then for the sordid sequel. Gathering 
 
DARK DOINGS IN LUVALELAND 137 
 
 up what little shreds of dignity are left to you, you 
 roll yourself up in a blanket, while your shabby shirt 
 tied to a tree branch is dancing itself dry in the wind. 
 But the cold cuts like a carving-knife, and a blanket is 
 inadequate. So, to finish the folly, you are facetiously 
 forced to keep the shirt company — you dancing yourself 
 warm, while it dances itself dry. Of course your comfy 
 negro, per contra, likes all this splashing, for he never 
 wore boots and never felt damp with the clammy cling 
 of wet stockings. 
 
 {Later.) 
 
 The extraordinary insalubrity of the Luvale flats is 
 appalling. In later days, it was in these sweltering 
 plains Cyril Bird and brave young Copithorne poured out 
 their lives for Luvaleland. Characteristically and car- 
 dinally men of deep love for souls, they gave their all to 
 a tribe that listened for years to the Gospel with sharp 
 antagonistic ears. Once Bird left for the Ocean, osten- 
 sibly to take a much-needed furlough, but the haunting 
 need of that vile Luvaleland dragged him back, and the 
 end was soon reached. Life like a spent steed panting 
 towards its goal, the Pauline gleam in his eye and praise 
 on his lips. Black-water fever they called his mortal 
 malady, but he died of a broken heart, yes, broken for a 
 tribe of robbers — a holiday at last, furlough in Glory ! 
 Weary and worn by the vertical rays, what a whiff of 
 joy in the thought : " Heaven's ahead — hurrah ! " 
 
 Remember, there is no deep valley but near some 
 great hill, and that sowing in tears culminated in others 
 
138 THINKING BLACK 
 
 reaping with joy. Days grow into months, and months 
 into years, and then a lady can tell of a whole town of 
 Luvale ^ turning to God by Jesus Christ : men, women, 
 and children, who at last look beyond the Missionary to the 
 God Who sent him. Oh ! ye binders of other men's 
 sheaves, remember the weary Birds and Copithornes of 
 the African field. Let us not therefore judge " another 
 man's servant " in this resolve of Cyril Bird to die in and 
 for Africa. Much can be said pro and con, but probably 
 more pro than con. Would you desert your own infant 
 in a foreign land when desertion meant doom ? 
 
 Under English laws it is a misdemeanour punishable 
 with five years' penal servitude to abandon or expose an 
 infant or child under two years so as to " endanger its 
 life or to inflict permanent injury, actual or probable, 
 upon its health." How much more the crime committed 
 against the new-born African soul in exposing it to the 
 vicissitudes of a pastorless existence ! Too well this brave 
 man knew that mere " marking time " is of as little value 
 as counting beads in worship. Too well he knew, that if 
 we speak a dozen African languages with the tongues of 
 men and angels and have not love, then Africa only 
 claims in us one more of the mob of sounding brass and 
 clanging cymbals. Ay, even if we give our bodies to be 
 burned with African fever and have not love, we are 
 nothing. Nevertheless, it is just here the Roman 
 
 1 Following Mr. and Mrs. Bird came Mr. Schindler, Dr. Fisher, Mr. and 
 Mrs. O'Jon, Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham, and many other noble men and 
 women. Ka/ombo was the first branch station, then Kalunda, then Kaleiie. 
 
DARK DOINGS IN LUVALELAND 139 
 
 Catholics, farther East, make the cosy Protestants blush, 
 for while we are famous "furlough " folks, they burn their 
 bridges and stick to their posts. Both nuns and priests 
 dedicate their lives to the land, never hoping to sight 
 Europe again, while we parade England with lantern 
 lectures ! These Romans laugh at us for so deserting our 
 posts, and say that we are like a soldier who runs out of 
 action to go and try his skill at a shooting-range. The 
 real battle and real bullets are in here, in the bush, while 
 away yonder on a far English platform is the amateur 
 shooting - range. " I felt like a fireless chimney in 
 summer," was the testimony of an old " deputation " 
 Missionary in England. 
 
 (19 th September.) 
 Unless, however, this record is to remain hopelessly 
 tangled, we must mention sundry Luvale traits that block 
 our road. Like chief, like people. Copying the Wagogo 
 on the Zanzibar road, here you have a whole tribe 
 spreading its nets and lurking by the roadside for loot. 
 Legal loot, though, this claims to be ; for when the word is 
 passed along the path that a caravan is advancing, there 
 is a tribal flutter, and this news draws them like a magnet. 
 Sea-lawyers every soul of them, they flood your camp and 
 pack in so tightly that the perfumed crowd exhales the 
 noxious smell of a bad drain. Dr. Johnson's remark 
 about Scotland is really applicable to odorous Luvaleland. 
 For when they informed him, travelling by night, that 
 he had entered Scotia, he retorted, " Yes, I could smell 
 it in the dark ! " (Fie ! Dr. Johnson). Having the blood 
 
140 THINKING BLACK 
 
 of good old Scotland in my veins, it costs me quite a 
 patriotic pang to repeat this anti-Scotland slander, but 
 the words, false then, are true now when applied to the 
 Luvale — you literally smell your arrival. You smile, 
 too, at the crowd of women perfecting the work of nature 
 with dress and face smeared with red dye. Yet, after all, 
 what is the difference between these and an English lady, 
 who daubs two big spots of rouge on her cheeks ? How 
 true it is that the vices we laugh at in others, laugh at us 
 in ourselves. Ponder the whirligig of time. In the 
 Apostle Paul's day at Rome, was not this the very taunt 
 to restrain Roman ladies from dyeing their hair and 
 painting their faces, to wit, that they would become as 
 ugly as " the woad-stained Britons " ? Yes, we were the 
 " niggers " of those days. Did not Propertius try to 
 frighten Cynthia out of cosmetics by likening her to " the 
 coarse blue-eyed Britons"? And did not Cicero write 
 to his pal long ago : " Atticus ! . . . the stupidest and 
 ugliest slaves come from Britain " ? 
 
 In a second, with commendable promptitude, the busi- 
 ness begins, jabber, babble, twaddle, cackle! — all baiting you 
 like a bear. Then they break into a whirl of questions, 
 who ? why? when? where? whither? — and although once or 
 twice you make a wild dive for a probable answer, it ends 
 in your wearily resigning all pretensions to deal with them. 
 These Luvale ladies have a limited dress allowance : 
 fancy one of these sable sisters of mine wearing a la mode 
 a mere four-inch ribbon of calico. Pointing her black-kid- 
 glove finger right in my eye, she called me " Softie." It 
 
DARK DOINGS IN LUVALELAND 141 
 
 is Chindele! this, Cliindele! that; and so they prattle on, 
 all of them talking the proverbial nineteen to the dozen, 
 yet peevish and perverse withal, and — depend upon it — 
 just waiting for an opening. Yet something must be 
 done, so throwing etiquette to the winds, after enduring 
 it all with exemplary meekness, you gesture them off. 
 But (wolf!) dare even push one, dare even flick one 
 across the face with a handkerchief, and the looting law- 
 suit begins. We are caught as neat as a rat in a drain, 
 everything now ripe for a row. Fishing is the best simile 
 for this thing, however, and one of our Biheans is the first 
 foolish fish to rise to the Luvale fly, the possible lawsuits 
 now being legion. 
 
 {Later.) 
 Be sure of it, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, 
 these lawsuits in Africa are legion, the be-all and end-all 
 of their lazy lives. From prince to beggar they have 
 resolved to trade on the local sanctions and punishments 
 of society. Take this big black, shedding not the tears 
 of penitence but revolt ; he blundered into litigation by 
 running into a hut for shelter from the rain, and the 
 housewife has the law on him. Plea : " You came 
 dripping wet into my domicile, and these thy raindrops 
 betoken much weeping in my house." Verdict, the wet 
 man must pay for his ominous action. Next comes a 
 pettifogging action because a man called his fellow by the 
 wrong name : " How dare you call me Mr. Tree when I 
 am Mr. Baggage ? If you name me Tree, then you 
 thereby saddle me with all that individual's legal responsi- 
 
142 THINKING BLACK 
 
 bility." Verdict for the plaintiff, because law is not logic 
 and logic is not law. But worse than all this comes a 
 long string of cases, each plea amounting to the effrontery 
 that it is wrong to affirm the right, the accused's error 
 being that he made no error. A man named "River" 
 has blood on his arm and a passer-by draws his attention 
 to this fact, and in he goes among the meshes of the legal 
 drag-net. Penalty : Mr. River must be paid for the 
 accused's error in not committing an error. Another 
 negro of the same ilk finds a legal grievance in the fact 
 that truth has too much stins: in it. Crossing the river 
 with a fellow-traveller, a leech clings to his leg, and the 
 lawsuit arises out of this friendly and kindly reminder 
 that the leech was clinging to him. Leech indeed ! the 
 real blood-sucker is this litigious black who cries. Give ! 
 Give! Of the same sort is this third man; "Scar" 
 (Mukofu) his name and scar the subject of his legal action. 
 He is an old warrior, has a healed gash on his body, but 
 instead of being proud of it as a kind of Marengo medal 
 on which Napoleon wrote the lone words, " I was there," 
 — instead of this, he runs a man into " the judgment 
 circle " because he congratulated him on his cured wound. 
 " Why mention the scar at all ? " snapped the warrior ; " 'tis 
 mine, not yours." Don't ask the why of some of these 
 lawsuits ; could mortal man tell ? Here is an individual 
 who invited another to eat porridge that has lain over- 
 night — why make a lawsuit out of that ? Here is another 
 passing a few graves in the grass, and he goes over the 
 names of the various occupants of the little graveyard — 
 
DARK DOINGS IN LUVALELAND 143 
 
 why a lawsuit for that ? Or this man who out of sheer 
 kindness warned his neighbour of impending danger — 
 why have the law on him for that? Can you wonder 
 that the black man will not believe the Gospel of Grace 
 because it is all too incredibly good to be true ? What 
 does he know about Grace ? Here, too, you learn the 
 reason why your emancipated African under modern 
 European laws is such an inglorious disappointment. For 
 the transition is all too abrupt, and the same African who 
 formerly had tribal manners rammed down his throat by 
 legal code, now thinks he can lapse into grossi^rete and 
 indifference to details. Take, for instance, that stern old 
 law of theirs against random spitting : was he not 
 penalised for this ? Alas ! the new white regime has no 
 such penalty, and one negro cook I knew, having run out 
 of wash-up-water for his dishes, calmly sent in to his 
 master two courses, all the plates of which had been 
 washed (dare I write it ? ) with his own African saliva. 
 * * * 
 
 As in Bihe, so, too, farther East, all the hamlets we 
 peer into are of the same pig-sty sort. Imagine a land 
 of huts from ocean to ocean ; a land in which not one 
 noble castle ever lifted its grey towers above the ancient 
 forest ; a land of holes and hovels, the huts built in a few 
 days and lasting about as long. How true it is that the 
 African leads off by debasing his surroundings, and then 
 his surroundings take revenge by debasing the African. 
 When you stumble across one of these in the woods, and 
 send an in(]^uisitive glance round inside, it is only to see 
 
144 THINKING BLACK 
 
 what a long start the Devil has of the Missionary. The 
 sin is all sinned in the noonday glare, the kind of thing 
 spoken of by the prophet as " sin drawn with a cart-rope." 
 The same old source of troubles, too, is this tight packing 
 together in a filthy town. For the greatest enemy is 
 internal : first the enemy of his own heart, then the enemy 
 of his own household, anon the enemy of the next hut, 
 until, finally, the enemy of the next tribe reads them the 
 old lesson that a house divided against itself cannot stand. 
 Born in their chains, they live in them and die hugging 
 them as they rush over the precipice into the abyss. 
 These chains are physical, and spiritual, and hereditary. 
 In an African village you can lie awake all night 
 pondering pitifully the needs of the land, and during that 
 long vigil hear the snufiles and hoarse cries of a dozen 
 little babies. Poor youngsters whose skin hangs loosely 
 on them like an ill-fitting garment, cursed with the 
 syphilitic curse. 
 
 " An infant crying in the night : 
 An infant crying for the light : 
 And with no language but a cry." 
 
 These are the poor little bairns who, as Bishop South 
 sadly said, " are not born into the world, but damned 
 into it." To illustrate : Take this life-history of one 
 such moaning and whimpering cherub. Mother loves 
 her bairn, but she must be ofi* to the woods for firewood, 
 and baby cannot go. What's to be done ? The dilemma 
 is solved by a neighbour woman, one of the black barren 
 type, who plots with deadly intent against the life of 
 
DARK DOINGS IN LUVALELAND 145 
 
 her neighbour's child. Here, then, comes the hell-born 
 thought. Now is her chance. So, dissolving in philan- 
 thropic smiles, she hypocritically offers to nurse baby in 
 the mother's absence — consequence : murder. The human 
 fiend rubs into the gums of baby the virus of a loathsome 
 and nameless disease, and the cherub dies a horrible death. 
 Even the local black poet is horrified at a thing of this 
 sort, and composes a Luban dirge which I translate : — 
 
 " What is a baby's dying groan 
 To the barren who have none of their own 1 " 
 
 Decidedly, we are in Luvaleland. The young boys 
 about here are called the men, and the elders are called 
 the "old boys," and no wonder. For these youngsters 
 begin to live at full gallop when they are more babies 
 than boys, and thus early sowing the wind they reap a 
 roaring whirlwind : at twenty years of age they are 
 weak and can scarcely trot, much less gallop, without 
 the spur of stimulants. Borrowed beer, and preferably 
 borrowed than bought. Sneaked tobacco, and the more 
 he sneaks the pleasanter the smoke. Hemp paid for, 
 ay, paid with the uttermost farthing, for this last lashes 
 him with passion. And so the three wicks of the lamp 
 of life soon burn out in blazes, the brain, the blood, and 
 the breath. " Soon ripe, soon rotten," is the proverb 
 that tells the whole story, for if he must be a man at 
 fourteen then he is sure of being a boy at thirty. An 
 African lad knows everything too early, and therefore 
 can learn nothing when it is too late. 
 
 lO 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 The Desert Journey 
 
"God hath His deserts broad and brown, 
 A solitude— a sea of sand- 
 On which He lets Heaven's curtain down, 
 Unknit by His Almighty Hand." 
 
 "Then Israel sang this song: 
 Spring up, O well ; sing ye unto it." 
 
 Numbers xxi. 17. 
 
 "Long the blessed Guide has led me 
 
 By the desert road ; 
 Now I see the golden towers — 
 
 City of my God. 
 There amidst the love and glory 
 
 He is waiting yet; 
 On His hands a name is graven 
 
 He can ne'er forget." 
 
 Mb 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 The Desert Journey 
 
 J/f/^ HEREIN the reader crosses the 
 desert^ and finds Zebuluns por- 
 tion awaiting him^ yea, he " sticks of 
 treasures hid in the sand.^^ 
 
 (Later.) 
 UT in this impudent lawlessness is there no law-giver ? 
 Not now, but (here let me anticipate) a little later 
 the Portuguese pushed in a line of forts as far as 
 Nakandundu, this last link in their chain of Commandants 
 being a terribly typical afftiir. *' Africa begins at the 
 Pyrenees," said Napoleon long ago, and here is a Portu- 
 guese who proves that Portugal is as bad as Africa. A 
 prince of brigands, this official is a noonday slaver : 
 instance, his sending out 12 kilos of powder to buy a boy. 
 No boy marketable for the moment ; so in lieu of the 
 masculine gender they drag in a young woman and baby as 
 equitable equivalent. But this petulant Portuguese must 
 have his boy ; so a black soldier, knowing his masterful 
 man, offers to barter a boy for the baby and mother — done ! 
 You, of course, call this spoiling the country, and Senhor 
 
 149 
 
150 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Commandant heartily agrees with the idea ; spoiling is 
 the very word, only he makes this poor participle do 
 double duty — he spoils the country by extorting the 
 spoils. Across the way, the Mission is a wakeful witness 
 of it all, but this Chefe scorns intervention, pouring out 
 fluent anathemas against the English. Prejudice, re- 
 member, is only another way of spelling "prejudge," and 
 the blood flames in such an official's face like a danger 
 signal whenever the Missionary expostulates. But there 
 is impending change. Soon this political Apothecary 
 discovers a fly in his ointment, the British and Belgians 
 advancing simultaneously. Up from the South- West 
 come the former ; West from the Garenganze come the 
 latter, both bent on combating this Portuguese slavery, 
 both encroaching up near this Commandant's door. 
 Time was when all around was no man's land, unlimited 
 territory meaning unlimited despotism. Now comes the 
 check. A hunted-down Luvale man runs across the 
 border seeking sanctuary on British soil ; how can the 
 Portuguese chief get at him ? Very simply. Salimi is 
 " wanted," but he is snug under the shelter of the Jack 
 in N.W. Rhodesia. But — mark this conjunction — 
 Samusole is his brother-in-law, and he is on Portuguese 
 soil ; so his village is surrounded by night and S. dragged 
 ofi" to the Fort. Beaten every day by chicotte, he 
 pays up some slaves, yet still they dun and whack him — 
 all by proxy, all for that mysterious other man who is 
 enjoying English protection across the border. 
 
 This Salimi, I have said, is " wanted," but for what 
 
THE DESERT JOURNEY 151 
 
 and whose crime ? He lias a hamlet annoyingly across 
 the frontier, you remember, and to this man's place came 
 three roaming Portuguese slavers one day. Out of the 
 grass spring three Britishers, and the three slavers are 
 imprisoned. Then the clannish Portuguese over the way 
 gnash their teeth, and now it's " Salimi this " and " Salimi 
 that," until in sheer exasperation they pounce on the man 
 who dared to marry such a being's sister. The old ghost 
 of Nkole, you see. No wonder the natives are bad. 
 Yet as a matter of fine fact the best defence of this 
 oppressor is made by these very negroes who are wronged. 
 As a triumph of terseness they read off another " thinking 
 black " lesson from their old Book of Nature, and find that 
 a dozen trees all growing in a clump together dart up like 
 needles to the sky. Whereas, j9er conti^a, one solitary tree 
 has the tedious tendency to be crooked. The letter S — 
 that's the twisty shape isolation makes many a lonely 
 white man. Six or sixteen of the letter 111111 in a cluster 
 — lo ! the crowding together of civilisation straisfhtens out 
 all their S-shaped crooks and cranks. This, then, is their 
 defence of the white man cut off" from all his race, and the 
 Bantu song runs : — 
 
 " Oh ! crooked lonely forest tree, 
 Yes, crooked because lonely. 
 How very different things would be 
 If only comrades two or three 
 Could break your lone monotony." 
 
 One could probably travel far across the fields of 
 literature and fail to find a better metaphor for the 
 
152 THINKING BLACK 
 
 benefits of mutual help derived from dwelling in a com- 
 munity — ten trees in a clump shooting up like needles, 
 and one lone tree twisted. Moral : Don't be a hermit, or 
 you will be crooked and cranky. 
 
 (1st October.) 
 
 And so, as the thirty days in September pass, one is 
 endlessly reminded by this negro babble that Africa and 
 the African are merely convertible terms. Each is 
 mutually and monotonously explanatory of the other. 
 Here on the march, for instance, you are daily rubbing 
 shoulders with a negro whose naked speech is first 
 cousin to his naked body : nude negro = nude speech. 
 Even in English, why forget that custom and costume 
 are the same word ? Therefore in Africa the funny 
 formula runs, nude costume = nude custom, and naked 
 negro means naked speech. Call it objectionable this, by 
 all means, but call it also consistent on the negro's part. 
 For precisely as Mr. African's soul is clothed in its only 
 black suit of bare skin, so too that same soul clothes itself 
 in equally nude speech. 
 
 Another key to "thinking black." Take this great 
 African sun as a formative factor in our negro's character. 
 Here you have the pulse of the whole black race. There 
 in that fructifying, sterilising sun their hard history is 
 epitomised, for in this hopelessly dry season so sharply 
 contrasted with the luxuriant wet, you find the source of 
 spasm in the negro's very bones. This time the formula 
 runs, " Like seasons, like African " ; and just as Africa 
 goes to sleep for half of the year, the very tree-sap dying 
 
THE DESERT JOURNEY 153 
 
 down into the tap-root, so, even so, with our dozing negro. 
 He copies his own Africa and is as lazy as a log, hibernat- 
 ing like a hedgehog. The reason, this, why there are so 
 few moody Africans and why per million they are of one 
 humdrum type. Just as from king to beggar they are 
 all N., S., E., and W. dining on one absolutely uniform 
 porridge and beans, even so for thousands of miles they 
 have all the same sort of sun-baked weather, same yellow 
 outlook, same six-months-on-end blue sky. No use here 
 for that prop of introductory conversation in England— 
 the weather. Contrast the moody Englishman for whom 
 Nature creates a new mood with the changing weather of 
 each new day, John Bull groping through the mistof Monday 
 to greet Tuesday's sunshine, and anon waking to the rattle 
 of Wednesday's rain. Weather is a notorious formative 
 of character in man's moods, the spirits rise and fall with 
 the mercury, a varying barometer making a varying type 
 (5f individual. 
 
 Not so, however, when the first loud crack of thunder 
 heralds the farmer's rains ; that very sound seems to 
 startle him from his winter sleep. His two seasons make 
 the African into two distinct men with two distinct 
 manners, for here comes their great annual miracle of the 
 blossoming of Aaron's rod. Nature's hurried growth 
 is now a type of his own spasmodic haste, and he has 
 caught the infectious quiver in the air. Some, indeed, 
 do snatch at the closing weeks of the dry season to travel, 
 for this is their only chance to see the face of their own 
 continent after the grass fires have swept the vast land 
 
154 THINKING BLACK 
 
 bare. But the first roar of the advancing rain acts as an 
 alarm-bell to call in all strago-lers who have wandered off 
 for a journey, and now you can behold a model negro, 
 hedgehog sloth all gone, stooping to his hoe in the 
 morning mists. That bobbing back of his might be made 
 of cast-iron with a hinge in it, so pluckily, so ploddingly 
 does he bend to this farming business. The rising tree- 
 sap seems in some sense to be a picture of what is happen- 
 ing in the black man. Ah ! if he would only treat his 
 soul as he treats his fields, all would be well. 
 
 {Late7\) 
 
 Ten years ago I passed along the edge of a field, and 
 there was the owner toiling at the hard soil, a drought 
 having baked the red earth like a brick. " From the 
 passing a passing word " is the local proverb, so I comply 
 with tribal courtesy, bawling across the corn-field a 
 regret that the soil is onerous and intractable. But the 
 churlish clay has made a churlish cultivator. Back from 
 my gruff" friend comes the gruffer blasphemy : "Yes ! a 
 hard God has hardened the soil by denying rain." 
 
 Ten years pass, years that see this graceless man with 
 many a graceless anti-God growl, a hard heart blaming 
 a hard God. And now comes another instance of " the 
 dramatic neatness of God's methods " — ten years have 
 passed, I say, and here is the same man in the same field 
 and the same passer-by. The rich red loam is no longer 
 refractory, two successive days of rain have soaked the 
 soil soft, the old growler's face wreathed in smiles. " From 
 the passing man a passing word," and once again I 
 
THE DESERT JOURNEY 155 
 
 smile across a remark about the child's-play hoeing under 
 such simple conditions. Saved and knows it, what does 
 he now answer — this same man in this same field to this 
 same passer-by ? " Truly soft," says he, " is the soil, for 
 the God Who softened my heart also softened the hard soil : 
 He has rained on my hard soul as well as on my soil." 
 Do not blame that simple soul because he did not see 
 the coincidence, for he did not. No calendar has he, no 
 notion that here — or nowhere — is divine drama. Ten 
 solid years ago, the same field, same man, same passer- 
 by : a hard heart and hard soil then ; a soft, saved 
 heart and soft, saved soil now. The old graceless growl is 
 gone, and now for the note of joy — a full octave, a grand 
 diapason. Having both a canoe and a farm, this saved 
 soul is as much sailor as landsman, and can literally fulfil 
 Clement's word in the second century : " Praising we 
 plough ; and singing we sail." 
 
 {20th Octoher.) 
 A formidable feature of our inland journey is the 
 crossing of the weary Kifumadzi desert in the Luvale 
 country. A curious bit of the earth's crust this to crawl 
 over. In old maps here is a flat seriously put down as a 
 sea, and (certes !) looking out from camp just as day is 
 breaking in red on the great expanse of waste lying at 
 our feet, the outlook is reminiscent of a sullen sea. We, 
 as it were, camped on the beach near by, while stretching 
 far beyond lies the great sandy ocean shorn by the wind 
 of anything that ever grew upon it. Tufts of sere grass 
 the exception. You might carry the idea a little further, 
 
156 THINKING BLACK 
 
 and like ships away on the skyline, suspicion the faint 
 outline of one or two palm-like trees, mere pin-points in 
 the immensity. Into this desolation we plunge to-day, 
 our black guides warning us that we will be cheaply 
 out of it with four days' hard journeying, water the cruel 
 lack ahead. We are in for Zebulun's portion at last : 
 " They shall suck of treasures hid in the sand." Thus 
 spurred on, we cut off our first slice of desert in a five 
 hours' journey, lurching along over tiresome sand, the 
 joys of a flat-as-a-dining-table path quite lost in the 
 dragging, deterrent track. Towards the close of the journey 
 wells dug by former travellers begin to appear, and down 
 into these we anxiously peer for a sign of water. In vain. 
 Once and again, and yet again, we draw blank, all as dry 
 as a kiln. Not enough water to wash your teeth in, not 
 a drop. N.B. : Dig your well before you are thirsty. 
 Yet still we swelter on, more than a little hungry, more 
 than a little hot, more than a little dirty, seeking, ever 
 seeking the water we find not. Miles and miles of un- 
 mitigated desert — voila tout. 
 
 At last our joyless, jaded men will no longer be 
 beguiled on by hopes of hypothetical water, so they de- 
 clare they will dig. This they do, right nobly, under a 
 broiling sun, and although a solid hour of it sees no 
 result, still they dig on into the second hour with plucky 
 negro pugnacity and breathing as loud as a forge bellows. 
 That perspiration streaming from them in the sun, they 
 call " the salt melting out of the beef" All our superior 
 sagacity is scorned, the Bihean being quite sure that if 
 
THE DESERT JOURNEY 157 
 
 water appears at all it will be in spite of us. Finally he 
 
 won't even answer our eager questions, but keeps a surly 
 
 silence, thinking, no doubt, that the sound of our own 
 
 nonsense will make us ashamed. Approaching one of 
 
 these diggers, tongue hanging out of the head, I was 
 
 alarmed to see the faddy old gentleman look up with 
 
 terror — or a good imitation of it — and beseeching me 
 
 with the sweat of honest toil on his brow to make myself 
 
 scarce, or the boots would drive away the water. 
 
 " Boots," quoth he, " are not for desert sands." But the 
 
 darkest hour is before the dawn, and the great frosty 
 
 chill in our soul is dissipated by a sharp pistol shot, 
 
 " Water ! " his eloquent, unassisted noun scorning the aid 
 
 of verb, adjective, or adverb. 
 
 Then a man's head peeps up above the top of the 
 
 well, and again and again the old Greek " Eureka ! " rings 
 
 out defiance to the desert. Anon comes a song centuries 
 
 old, and sung in all Eastern lands, one song, many 
 
 variants : — 
 
 " Spring up, well ! " 
 
 At first the stuff drunk is liquid mud, first cousin to 
 dirtiest ditch-water of old England, but early visitors to 
 the well find the sediment eliminated and a fairly clean 
 drink the residuum. Besides, there is a real rift in this 
 cloud, and barring colour and consistency this precious 
 fluid is neither brackish nor bitter — why, sand is the finest 
 filter going. Far better this than the many putrid 
 African pools one must sample, brimful with tadpoles 
 and insects as nameless as numberless, 
 
158 THINKING BLACK 
 
 But, as the natives put it, " there can be no birth 
 without a pang," so the dawn of the 21st of October sees 
 us stoically beginning a second day of the desert tramp, 
 the absolute sameness of the chronicle being repeated 
 with the certainty of a phonograph. The silent desert 
 parching in the sun can now be seen to break away in 
 weary waves of sandhills, and our caravan pace has de- 
 generated into a crawl, the route really not as " the crow 
 flies " but as the snail crawls. And sure, there is some- 
 thing of the infinite in the very monotony of this waste, 
 the vast sweep of the horizon only deepening this sense 
 of infinity. Our roasting English tweeds make us envy 
 the negro who peels to the waist and wears the merest 
 wisp of garment round his equatorial regions. Sun and 
 sand rule the road, the sun smiting your head and the 
 sand doing its exasperating worst for your feet. Then, 
 ahead, like a lurking lion, there is the same old perpetual 
 puzzle at sundown. To wit, how, where, and when to get 
 the supposititious fire that will boil the supposititious 
 water locked in the bosom of this desert ? 
 
 Splitting the caravan into two, like an orange, the 
 " water " section is left in camp to wring a few drops of 
 drink from that dry desert, whilst the faggot-seekers 
 scatter over the clean-swept sand for fuel. It soon 
 comes out that, far from thinking this "fire and water" 
 cleavage a mere accident of desert environment, our 
 negro argues that these two elements have for centuries 
 been owned as the great " Kings of Africa." Ask 
 him to prove his case for the dual kingship of Fire 
 
THE DESERT JOURNEY 159 
 
 and Water, and this is how he most quaintly works out 
 at the Euclidean Q.E.D. "A king indeed is King Fire," 
 says he, "for listen, oh listen. You pack all your 
 treasures into your house, and {' sweruf) an advancing 
 forest fire having licked up all the grass now leaps up at 
 your thatch, and devours your all, licking up in flame 
 even the last vestige of house and goods. But, look ye ! 
 down dips the sun, the cold night wind darts into your 
 body, and you gladly kneel before that same King Fire 
 (the destroyer of your earthly all), craving his cheering 
 warmth. Yea, you beseech him to cook your food, so little 
 dare you disdain King Fire. 
 
 " So, too, with King Water. The rushing water per- 
 chance swallows in death your loved first-born, drowned 
 perhaps in a canoe or crossing a rickety bridge. Yea, he. 
 King Water, is the murderer of your darling, but darest 
 thou refuse to drink him ? Contrariwise, at sundown you 
 cringingly kneel with your cup and — and drink of your 
 son's murderer 1 Hail, King Water ! and hail, King 
 Fire ! though ye slay me, yet must I cling to you." 
 Certain it is that, poetic ravings apart, this kingship of 
 these elements is a dry old forensic dictum among 
 negroes, and (arson excepted) damages from fire and 
 water in Africa are disallowed on the plea that it is an 
 ^' act of God." 
 
 More : next comes a choking simoom, every man 
 lying prone on the earth, head butting the sand. Good 
 it is to see the reign of Law even here, for your nude 
 natives are a lawless lot, and the Lord thus gives them an 
 
160 THINKING BLACK 
 
 excellent example of His eternal equipoise of law — these 
 howling sandstorms, I mean, rushing like fiends across 
 the miles of blistering sand. For, be it noted, this 
 sun burns, and burns, and b-u-r-n-s until, at a certain 
 point, it seems to have overreached itself. Thus having 
 disturbed by rarefaction the atmospheric balance, out 
 rush the sand-hounds of the desert, these whirling 
 hurricanes that easily establish equilibrium as by royal 
 command. They blind and choke mere man, no doubt, 
 but nevertheless the perfect balance of Nature is restored 
 by a perfect Creator. Nor dare a snug — and smug — 
 Missionary claim exemption from a mouthful of dirt upon 
 the plea that God's message has brought him to these 
 wilds : are not " the winds His messengers " too ? You'll 
 only get sand in your teeth if you open your mouth in 
 objection. Moral : Rain or shine, do not tamper with 
 God's government of His own Africa. 
 
 This is not all. Such real give and take is there in 
 this desert panorama that we are not surprised when, by 
 way of counterpoise, the pendulum swings from sand- 
 storm to the old hoax of mirage. Curious policy of make- 
 believe this, for here you have a dead desert that long ago 
 has killed all the poetry out of the waste ; here, wonder 
 of wonders, is a howling, wilderness in a sham penitential 
 way turning poet and cheating us with mirage. Stern 
 and forbidding as the earth is about here, what is this if 
 not the desert turning poet ? A mocking attempt, shall 
 we call it, to produce an imaginary oasis in lieu of the 
 real thing : else how can you square the undeniable fact 
 
THE DESERT JOURNEY 161 
 
 that the uglier the desert the more seductive the mirage ? 
 (Granted, the said bewitching mirage is as much in you 
 as it is in the treacherous desert, yet is it not equally 
 certain that, given no desert, there can be no mirage?) 
 Be that as it may, here is the true tale of a mirage. Back 
 came our faggot-searchers one by one, solemnly reporting 
 a lake to be seen away on the Southern skyline. The 
 oldest Biheans with us stoutly refused to believe the thing, 
 until finally the wrangle came to an issue in my offering 
 to accompany four of our faithfuls to see for ourselves ; 
 the pro lake and pro mirage factions being both repre- 
 sented. (Rather reminiscent, this, of the pro water, ^ro 
 fire sections we left behind. ) So off we start, heading due 
 South and tramping for two solid hours ; the pro lake 
 prophets developing a somewhat chastened optimism the 
 farther we penetrated into the void. On and on we go, 
 hope finally sinking so low that it seems to ooze out of 
 our boots — no lake visible, or likely to be. Only the same 
 old outlook on a limitless ocean of sand. Yet here is a 
 blatant "pro-laker" at your elbow indoctrinating you 
 with his eloquent fiction of a man-in-the-moon oasis, the 
 earnest entreaty of the man almost winning you over to 
 his dream. Certain it is, I have the black and white of 
 my note-book for it, that I too caught the same momen- 
 tary mirage, and declared my own private and unalterable 
 conviction that the men were right, for — for there was a 
 lake ! But the Bihean who was our guide enjoyed my 
 greenness, and for many a day afterwards when we met, 
 his face wore a suspicious smile suggestive of the fact that 
 
162 THINKING BLACK 
 
 he was still chewing the cud of an exceedingly pleasant 
 jest. As, however, we had the choice of either tramping 
 on South at this rate for ten solid days of desert, or going 
 back to camp, we preferred retreat. In all that weary 
 counter-march we sighted only two living things, a jackal 
 and a sad-faced gnu ; our Biheans arguing that of the two 
 the jackal was a peculiarly succulent morsel. Thus did 
 we prove that a desert, so obviously a death-trap in many 
 other particulars, caps all its sad shortcomings in this 
 accomplished mendacity of mirage. For if water for the 
 moment is not your pinch, then you are sure to dream of 
 the far-away leeks and garlic of Egypt. And if per- 
 chance the Army and Navy Stores have cheated the 
 wilderness by preserving Egyptian leeks and garlic, then 
 some other dream is sure to appear as your " will-o'-the- 
 wisp " of the night. Unfortunately, we had no animals 
 with us : a horse or a donkey is never deceived by 
 mirage. Smell, not sight, is their sure guide, and where an 
 animal sniffs not moisture you may despise Africa's most 
 seductive mirage. Away in the Western sky, lo ! a dozen 
 dark vultures hovering for the funeral of an antelope, the 
 official mourners these, come to bury a denizen of the 
 plains. More than mourners, they are the African grave- 
 diggers ; and, more than grave-diggers, they themselves are 
 the grave, the spades their own beaks. 
 
 w 'Tr tP 
 
 Not to mimic too much the guide-book style, let me 
 write one word in retrospect on the configuration of the 
 country. After crossing the Kwanza River heading East, 
 
THE DESERT JOURNEY 163 
 
 we encountered that curious switchback arrangement of 
 hills for the first week. Finally following this lively lot 
 of steeple-chasing it over the country, we are jolted down 
 into Luvaleland, literally " the Flats." Here the joys of 
 the future railroad surveyors begin, and long level miles 
 of country ahead will admit of a railway running like a 
 ramrod due East. Kavungu, afterwards the scene of the 
 sainted Cyril Bird's labours, was then only a dark den of 
 robbers, and a rendezvous for all the slave caravans of the 
 Interior. Here it is the muttering storm of revolt bursts 
 on us, and our craven carriers strike for higher wages. 
 After a five days' siege in our little forest zariba, the 
 enemy pulls down his flag, and all is in train for a start on 
 11th October for the last long stage of Eastward journey. 
 Struck the upper reaches of the far-flowing Zambezi on 
 the 18th, and on the 23rd swam across the Lukoleshe, its 
 last feeder intercepting our path. This means, of course, 
 that the rivers ahead all shed off" to the Congo basin on 
 the North. You would have applauded the army of 
 youngsters struggling across the broad Lutikina where we 
 forded it hard by the rapids. With load on head they 
 pluckily fought the rushing sheet of water, now and then 
 making a grab at some big brother when the flow 
 threatened to swish them ofi" their feet. By the 26th we 
 have, far on our right, the lonely Kalene Hill, on which 
 dark spot the lights of Dr. and Mrs. Fisher's house 
 will not begin to flicker for fourteen years to come. And 
 now we begin to pull ourselves together, for we have 
 passed the longitudinal centre of the continent and hope 
 
164 THINKING BLACK 
 
 wings onward. Then comes the crossing of the Lufupa 
 and Lulua, two noble rivers in one day, with laborious 
 bridging of the former. Camping on the off bank (oldest 
 rule of the road : cross your last river for the day and 
 camp !), the morrow sees us cutting across the " Zebra 
 Plains " ; no misnomer the name, for, superbly beautiful, 
 there they are in troops sporting in the sun. A sort of 
 safe postal address this, for Zebras, I fancy. Where are we 
 now ? Naive nature already suspicions some impending 
 change ahead, and the ground begins to echo a metallic 
 sound. Pushing on, we pass within stone-throw of the 
 great Miambo copper mines, a huge mass of mineral rock, 
 riddled all over with marks of excavations, and all 
 oxidised into green. Exactly like a great old fortress 
 shaken by war and riddled with shell. Frowning but- 
 tresses and gaping gashes all over. At last comes the 1st 
 of November and dies memorabilis of our venture. The 
 path from our camp at Miambo is a gentle slope upwards 
 for an hour, then along a level ridge boasting a stubborn 
 growth of sharp cactus. We are not on the easy descent 
 many minutes, however, when the hedging trees on all 
 sides disappear, and here is the Garenganze at last ! 
 Across the laughing waters of the Lualaba, there we have 
 the lovely vision of our blue Garenganze hills, and another 
 (mental) vision of lively life ahead. Thus it happened 
 that after thirty- two months of protracted endeavour en 
 route, we pass through the Western door of Mushidi'g 
 empire at the Lualaba. 
 
^ 
 
 y 
 
 ^W' 
 
 O" 
 
 ^C H I N 
 
 / 
 
 .A/\ 
 
 The Vastness 
 
 OF 
 
 AFRICA 
 
 ENGLISff MlL€S 
 
 O SOO WOO 
 
 I I t 
 
 / A 
 
 A-XrH- 
 
 'T^HE vastness of <t/{frica is vividly suggested by this map. India 
 (1,574,450 sq. miles)y China (1,300,000 sq. miles), Europe 
 (3,700,000 sq. miles)y Qreat "Britain (122,500 sq. miles), and most of 
 ^Australia (2,350,000 sq. miles) have all been laid {drawn to the same 
 scale) on the face of (lAfrica^ and slill there are many" uncovered plots^ 
 equal to India in bulk. The totaly 9,046,950 sq. miles against ^Africa's 
 1 2,000,000. 
 
BOOK II 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 Farthest, but Shut, In 
 
"Solomon, where is thy glory? 
 It's gone in the wind! 
 Babylon ! what of thy story ? 
 It's gone in the wind!" 
 
 RUCKERT (aPPROX. FROM GeRMAn). 
 
 " On crossing the Lualaba, I shall go direct S.W. 
 to the copper mines of Katanga. Eight days south 
 of Katanga the natives declare the fountains [of the 
 Nile] to be. When I have found them I shall return 
 by Katanga to the underground houses of Rua . . . 
 travel in boat up the river Lufira." 
 
 Livingstone's Farewell to Stanley. 
 
 '* You know the hopelessness of such a task [as 
 African Missions] till you find a St. Paul or a St. 
 John. Their representatives nowadays want so 
 much per year and a contract." 
 
 General Gordon to Sir Richard Burton. 
 
 iiji 
 
CHAPTER X 
 Farthest, but Shut, In 
 
 TJZHEP.EAT the reader is glad, 
 for at last, after thirty -two 
 months' delay on the road, he arrives at 
 Mushidts great capital. 
 
 YOU think that this great negro London is a choice 
 corner of the continent. Not a bit of it. By way 
 of choosing a country Mushidi has blundered on 
 a bare brown stretch of soil, flanked by two ribs of 
 rocky hills, scarcely any timber for fuel and a scarcer 
 supply of water. The city of Tantalus this Babylon 
 should be called, for the water, as it were, is up 
 to your chin, yet you can never get at it : 
 
 " Water, water, everywhere. 
 Nor any drop to drink." 
 
 The real rivers of the land, Lualaba and Lufira, just 
 near enough on the map to make the teeth water, and 
 just far enough to defy you to drink a drop. " Tan- 
 talising," we call it, but the "thinking black" metaphor 
 for this same idea is the wild phrase, " the non-biteable 
 elbow"! "Your elbow is near to your mouth, but can 
 
 167 
 
168 THINKING BLACK 
 
 you bite it ? " ask these thirsty ones. And the reason ? 
 The story runs that Mushidi was born out East in just 
 such a barren type of land, the tribe all drinking from 
 wells, and never seeing a fish. Far from being dis- 
 contented with their lot, they made necessity a virtue 
 and put the whole tribe under stern prohibition of 
 fish, this taboo going down to endless generations. 
 Here, then, you find Mushidi's reason for scorning the 
 banks of such a noble river as the Lualaba — did not 
 the despotism of custom doom thousands of souls to 
 renounce a fish diet? The dead ancestors of Mushidi 
 really rule the land from their graves in the Far East, 
 and they alone are the supreme arbiters in morals. 
 " Thou shalt not eat fish," say a thousand dead men, 
 and Mushidi's millions quake " Amen." Let the living 
 defy the voice of the dead : let them say, The times 
 are changed and we change with them — say this in 
 Africa and at once the door of the spirit-world is 
 slammed in their faces, and their guardian spirits are 
 turned to be their enemies. So here we are doomed 
 to drink dirty water for many a day, the potion so 
 putrid that it is impossible to drink any that has 
 lain overnight. 
 
 It is at the Nkulu end of this capital that Mushidi 
 has his headquarters, and here the Arabs have built 
 him his Castle of Indolence in wattle and daub, a large 
 but very shabby relation of Buckingham Palace. A 
 cold, cheerless, mud barn, really, the grass roof forbidding 
 a chimney. In Africa a room without a fireplace — and 
 
FARTHEST, BUT SHUT, IN 169 
 
 there are too many such — is like a head without eyes 
 in it, a face without a smile. You shiver in it even 
 when the air is warm, and you wonder why you do 
 so. Not so the negro. The first Luban who saw a 
 fire on the hearth deplored such a wicked waste of 
 fuel, and on seeing the flame running up the chimney, 
 actually proposed to run up after it. If all the heat 
 goes out at the top, why not take the overland route, 
 why not climb the roof, squat on the chimney, and 
 catch it coming out ? 
 
 In the days when I was the only white skin at 
 Bunkeya I got to size up my Mushidi rather closely. 
 Here the five hundred wives stream in on him with 
 well-cooked dainties, for do they not all vie with each 
 other to capture the Chiefs citadel, his stomach ? The 
 prose of this culinary combat, if converted into the poetry 
 of porridge, probably runs : — 
 
 "The turnpike road to royal hearts, I find, 
 Lies through their mouths, or I mistake mankind." 
 
 Thus it cometh to pass that, pampered with negro 
 luxury and softened by sloth, strength is forsaking 
 Mushidi's limbs as common sense his skull, and the old 
 tale is once again true that luxury is the conqueror 
 of conquerors. He never dreams what a great luxury 
 it is to dispense with luxury. Hungry as I often am 
 these days, Mushidi and I dine together on all manner 
 of messes, the only other invited guests being one or 
 two tiny negro tots who cannot aspire to be Mushidi's 
 
170 THINKING BLACK 
 
 rivals. I suppose it is on the principle of the smallest 
 stars being nearest the sun that these doll-guests are 
 allowed to join us, for even a group of elders is driven 
 off and expected to eat our leavings. Mushidi's favourite 
 name is that of a forest tree, and the loftier the tree, 
 remember, the less shade there is at its foot. So Mushidi's 
 very loftiness makes him lonely enough at these feasts. 
 Even aristocrats like Talashio and Mumomeka are waved 
 off. Of course, knives and forks are taboo, for why bring 
 weapons of death to a feast, the emblem of life ? 
 Spurning, therefore, such new-fangled vulgarities of 
 Europe, we follow the oldest track of the sons of men 
 leading to the cooking-pot, and washing our fingers 
 scrupulously, here we are in imagination sitting down 
 with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, using Adam's knives 
 and forks. Once, indeed, I produced a pocket-knife 
 wherewith to aid mastication, but the startled king, 
 alarmed at this lapse of decorum, seemed to imagine 
 I was going to dine off, instead of with, him. There is 
 sense, too, in this anti - knife idea, for surely we lose 
 our good teeth for the similar reason as the savage 
 has beauties. Our innovation of knives and forks has 
 done it all ; you cannot have your cake and eat it, 
 and if a knife does the work of the teeth, then you lose 
 the latter for the former. 
 
 It sounds very simple so to leap back a thousand 
 years in table etiquette, but the fact is, to sup with 
 primitive man you feel quite nervous about your first 
 dinner-party. Only one dish is allowed, and you are 
 
FARTHEST, BUT SHUT, IN 171 
 
 even denied any liquid assistance to wash it down. Hav- 
 ing heard rumours of our " grace before meat " doings, 
 Mushidi quite seriously wanted me to shut my eyes while 
 he kept his open " to see how it was done." Like the 
 young heathen " Huck," it seems to him droll, so droll, 
 this inability to proceed right off with our eating, without 
 first of all mumbling something over the food — yet there 
 is nothing wrong with it. When he asked if he should 
 *' say grace " too, I gave him a nasty nag by answering, 
 " No ! For it is written that God hath created meats to 
 be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and 
 know the truth." " Say something to God about the 
 food " is a curious (and not bad) phrasing of the request 
 for grace before meat. Farther out East, where raiding 
 is customary on the outskirts of some Christian native 
 schools, the rumour runs that warriors reckon on the very 
 devotions of the saints to swoop down and do cattle- 
 lifting. Like Mushidi, who asks me to pray while he 
 keeps his eyes open and watches, these freebooters say : 
 "Yes, let us wait till they shut their eyes and pray, then 
 when their eyes are shut we will steal their cattle." 
 Thus the very phrase "to shut the eyes" ultimately 
 works out at the very curious idea of " living for eternity," 
 the thought being that the man who so prays is oblivious 
 to the mere temporalities of life, for does he not shut his 
 eyes and look off to the unseen ? 
 
 And so the royal meal goes forward with great de- 
 corum, our stony silence only broken by the dip of each 
 sop ("a boat" they call it) into the sauce. No spoon 
 
172 THINKING BLACK 
 
 allowed, so you, the possessor of a richly developed sense 
 of humour, must mop up the gravy with a sop of mush. 
 Talk about manners, some of the royal notions of hon ton 
 make you fancy you are dining in the moon. Yet how 
 can I laugh at him when I remember that our own Henry 
 the Eighth, with magnificent unconcern, did also eat with 
 his fingers ? And when hungry would he not take up his 
 victuals and swallow them in handfuls at a time ? Why, 
 Mushidi in comparison is as polite as a dancing-master. 
 
 Be it noted, this puzzling Mushidi is keen on writing, 
 and here in Bunkeya it is a sight to see every paltry 
 scrap of paper prized almost more than cloth. One man 
 after another treats a bit of old newspaper as tenderly as 
 a crisp bank-note, a rumour having come in from the far 
 Ocean that our race was really " ruled by paper." Even 
 calico is common, they say, but does not paper buy 
 calico ? So they seize on every scrap they can find, and 
 soon you see the Chief scrawling on it a rapid Pitman's 
 system of shorthand kind of writing. Since the days of 
 old when his ancestors scribbled wdth sepia on papyrus, 
 this is the first timid dip into the great ocean of Literature 
 by the mighty negro. With a dexterous sweep of your 
 borrowed pencil he flashes along the paper in a curious 
 switchback manner, the lines crossing and recrossing each 
 other in a hopeless tangle. Oh ! ye who have seen a 
 spider crawl out of an inkstand and stroll across a sheet 
 of letter-paper ; never since then have you seen the equal 
 in penmanship. And all this crooked calligraphy because 
 we as a white race are ruled by paper, forgetful of the 
 
FARTHEST, BUT SHUT, IN 173 
 
 fact that although paper rules us, we at least rule our 
 paper. What a black-and-white jumble of crooked lines ! 
 " Medicine," is what he calls it, and, truth to tell, so 
 cryptic does it look that, in England, after vainly trying 
 to decipher same, one would most naturally send it round 
 to the local chemist to be made up as a prescription. 
 
 This " black-art " notion of letter- writing has got such 
 a cunning grip of the negro brain that even your own 
 black boy will recall you on urgent business by scrawling 
 a few lines of zigzag nonsense on a bare sheet of paper. 
 The real message, of course, is verbal, but these magic 
 lines of criss-cross could not be omitted. Is there any 
 significance in the fact that the negro word " to write " 
 is only the word " to tattoo," and does he think that we 
 tattoo on paper precisely as he does on his body ? Even 
 Mushidi, who does not believe in discretion being the 
 better part of valour, has been known to scrawl one of 
 these vainglorious cryptograms to his enemy in arms. 
 I wonder, does he think that to have it out in black and 
 white is better than settling scores in black and blue ? 
 Along with this funny stenography he (joyously scenting 
 battle !) takes great good care to send the eloquent 
 present of a hoe and bag of bullets, ofifering his enemy 
 a this-or-that choice — peace or war, bullets or hoe ? A 
 sort of heathen Parcels Post arrangement this, I suppose, 
 with accompanying communication per Letter Post. 
 
 No notion has he that in this writing of ours we catch 
 the living thought as a word and imprison it on paper. 
 The exact idea he seems to have of the business is akin 
 
174 THINKING BLACK 
 
 to that of the little girl who thinks that by pressing the 
 button she has thereby made the electric light. Pushing 
 investigations, it leaks out that the Arabs have for long 
 years juggled with the art of writing, this indeed being 
 their greatest asset among raw natives. It is magic or 
 nothing. Do they not believe that the most potent 
 medicine is simply a written line of the Koran, swallowed 
 by the sufferer? A literal use this of the prophet 
 Jeremiah's saying : " Thy words were found, and I did eat 
 them." The leaves of the Tree of Life are medicinal, but 
 so, too, argues the Arab, are literal leaves of a book. 
 Little wonder, then, the African clutches at the new idea 
 of writing, for when he sees us reading he wakens as 
 from a nightmare to discover that the whole heap of the 
 past experiences of his race is lost to ken because of 
 this lack of a literature. Yes, all the accumulated negro 
 wisdom of centuries might have been his heritage if only 
 somebody had dreamed of writing them down. But as it 
 is, every black boy is thrown on the hard knocks of the 
 world as though he were living in the year after Adam 
 fell — no past treasure of written wisdom. 
 
 Probably, too, the negro vice of congenital lying flows 
 from this same source of booklessness. For they have 
 nothing down in black and white. Promises are merely 
 verbal, not written, therefore the hardest-mouthed negro 
 wins. Had he committed himself to writing, then, follow- 
 ing the Arab idea of masticating paper, a hundred liars 
 could be made literally to eat their written lies. Did not 
 Christ meet all the Devil's lies with the one silencing 
 
A Typical "Wipe out." 
 
FARTHEST, BUT SHUT, IN 175 
 
 phrase : " It is written " ? Is this what Job means when 
 he cries : " Oh that mine enemy had written a book ! " ? 
 Certainly the African has nothing in writing, hence flows 
 this flood of falsehood. Hence, too, that proverb of 
 theirs, " When the rabbit was promised beans he pro- 
 duced a basket," the idea being that a verbal promise is only 
 valid when it is uttered, and not later. Art thou promised 
 beans ? Then produce thy basket and carry them off. 
 
 Exasperated at this lack of definite data, they (and 
 wouldn't you ?) have many a funny expedient to fix 
 facts in the mind. When I saw the Prince Chamunda 
 he was almost buried in a great coil of knotted cord : his 
 perpetual calendar this, of the passing days. Run on the 
 decimal system, every tenth knot is double, and as he 
 gazed on the increasing heap a sorry sigh escaped him. 
 Thinking me sadly lacking in scholastic culture, this man 
 laughed at my month of four weeks : he made it one 
 week = ten days, therefore thirty days = three weeks. If 
 a month, says he, how can you divide it by four ? But 
 this pioneer in time-tables was soon wiped out, for finally 
 the town rose ao-ainst him and shrieked that this 
 " numbering of the days " was witchcraft : was he not 
 merely counting out the days of his neighbours unto 
 burial ? Thus they strangled reform — a badly needed one 
 too, for quite an aged man will tell you blandly that he 
 is ten years of age. Is this calculation correct after all ? 
 Does he mean that, sleeping away three-quarters of his life 
 as he does, it is fair only to count the meagre margin that 
 remains of non-slept time ? Days they can count, but as 
 
176 THINKING BLACK 
 
 for mere hours ! Not one clock or watch in the whole 
 land, and their mighty sun overhead is so very much the 
 national timepiece that whether you innovate a " Water- 
 bury " or an eight-day clock, " sun " (nsaa) is the only 
 name they can give such a tantalising ticker. And here 
 it is in this clockless life you find the real root of his 
 happy-go-lucky existence ; never did that irritating tick- 
 tack tick-tack set the African nerves on edge ; never did 
 that everlasting click-click of the terrible escapement of 
 a watch put him on his mettle as a man. This to a 
 negro — to put it mildly — would be equivalent to dying a 
 peculiarly unpleasant and unnecessary kind of death. 
 Time is passing, quickly passing ; " but," objects the 
 negro, " why nag out the truth so brutally, why this 
 relentless repetition ? " 
 
 If it be permissible to English the famous line of 
 Schiller, " The happy hear no clock," then, certes, all 
 Africa would arise and claim that great German as their 
 anti-timepiece champion. The pretensions, too, of this 
 preposterous little thing called a " sun," still at it after 
 sundown, still bustling on through the night with a tick 
 like a fever pulse ! A " sun " ? why, the sun, the genuine 
 article, has set long ago. Yet the commonest form of 
 treating the first few watches that came in from the 
 Atlantic was to keep them swaying to and fro — lest they 
 stopped. But they inconsistently object to the very 
 thing they encouraged. One old man solemnly resolved 
 to boil his ticker by way of curing it of this " bee-like 
 buzzing in the belly " ; and another negro (younger, 
 
FARTHEST, BUT SHUT, IN 177 
 
 therefore wiser) frankly solved the problem by eviscerating 
 the inner wheels. With a kind of lofty obstinacy, these 
 negroes would listen not at all to my short but masterly 
 account of their delicate mechanism, and finally the poor 
 palpitating watches were " killed " neatly and thoroughly, 
 their tin cases becoming the smart snuff-boxes of such 
 smart Africans. 
 
 Another attempt I saw at negro recording was in a 
 little hut where I slept. Looking up to the beehive roof 
 I spied a number of tiny white flags flying, mere ribbons 
 of calico these, some grimed with soot, and one quite new. 
 " Oh ! " said the owner thereof, " these are receipts of 
 debts I have paid." Commoner still is it to find little 
 packets of twigs scrupulously tied together, the varying 
 sizes all eloquent of some transaction represented by these 
 vouchers — a long tusk of ivory, for instance, being 
 memorised by a longish twig, and so on in ratio right 
 round the various sorts and sizes of tusks. 
 
 * * * 
 
 The royal " sneeze," I find, is a solemn event here in 
 Court life. For if this Mushidi can produce a successful 
 sneeze in public, then the thousands of negroes acclaim 
 such a sovereign act with a thunder of hand-clapping : 
 "Long live the King ! Hail I" Therefore the oftener he 
 so sneezes the longer is he supposed to live, the idea 
 being that a sneeze is only a superabundance of life 
 overflowing in friendly fizz. A paroxysm of sneezing 
 only evokes a chorus of approval, and one almost suspects 
 that the old man is addicted to the very snufiSng that is 
 
178 THINKING BLACK 
 
 taboo. As, therefore, all his oppressed subjects are 
 presumably longiug for Mushidi's death, this is the reason 
 for his so theatrically brandishing this sneeze in their 
 faces. A sort of health certificate it is, notifying all 
 comers that there is life in " the old boy " yet, for has not 
 the champagne of life still some fizz in it ? Oh, that 
 beaming smile of hope spreading across the monarch's 
 countenance when he is waiting for his sneeze, notice of 
 whose arrival has been telegraphed in advance. x4.-a-a- 
 atchoo ! comes the mighty deed, and the roar of response 
 is so loud that you can almost understand what 
 Xenophon means when he tells you of the famous sneeze 
 that decided the fate of Athens. For is not this sneeze 
 as historic as it is international ? Compare in ancient 
 Greece the greeting " Zeus preserve thee " after a sneeze. 
 Or in ancient Italy the phrase, " Sit salutiferum," with its 
 modern Italian equivalent, "Felicita." Or the German 
 " Gesundheit," the French " Bonne sant^," and the North 
 of England " Bless the bairn," all after a solemn sneeze. 
 The contrary, too, is also seen when His Majesty is 
 indisposed, a mere royal headache or cold sending a 
 shiver through the land. In Kussia, one tear in the 
 Czar's eye is said to cost a thousand pocket-handkerchiefs ; 
 but Mushidi, he goes farther, and resolves that if he 
 cannot sleep he will let nobody else do so, saint or sinner. 
 Many a midnight messenger does he send off" to us to call 
 the " men of God," and he gives his royal word with a 
 royal oath that our medicines mean " Life Eternal." 
 ^' Kapali Vali Okufa!" he said as he gazed at the 
 
FARTHEST, BUT SHUT, IN 179 
 
 bottles of physic: "There is no more death." The old 
 Napoleonic phrase, " As false as a bulletin," becomes quite 
 the common idea at Mushidi's Court. " Eternal health " 
 is his dream — but remember the average eternity of a 
 negro lasts only six weeks. A most nerve-racking ordeal 
 any such " treatment" ever is, because the native " witch- 
 doctors " are usually attacked for failure, and frictions 
 abound. A favourite method of disposing of a nasty 
 drug is the common African device of taking the dose, not 
 in person, but by proxy, the real sick man believing that 
 if even his cousin drinks it for him, then the healing 
 virtue will be the same. Have they not the same blood ? 
 Or smoke your medicine in a pipe, as one patient of 
 mine did. Busy with something else, and mindful of the 
 dictum that the whole art of medicine consists in judicious 
 poisoning, I gave the lady three tabloids, leaving her to 
 dispose of them in the easy and elementary mode of such 
 a pampered form of dispensing. Swallow them ? Not 
 she, my lady. Meeting her an hour afterwards, the 
 only answer this negro sister gave was by pointing 
 silently to the huge gourd pipe she was then smoking. 
 Nor could I remotely guess what the solemn-faced 
 sacrifice meant by this pointing in such a scared way to 
 her pipe, until my eye caught the poor tabloids roasting 
 in the bowl like coffee-beans. She cannot conceive how 
 decisive is a doctor's dose, but in a kindly way approves 
 all she can. Put the clinical thermometer in her mouth 
 for a few seconds, and she sucks it solemnly for healing 
 virtue. Remove now the said instrument and wave her 
 
 12 
 
180 THINKING BLACK' 
 
 off — back she comes to-morrow for — for a second suck, 
 the thermometer having worked mightily, yea mentally. 
 She means, doubtless, to be cured by degrees. But Mr. 
 Missionary, being a bit of a quack in his own quiet way, 
 often finds his awkward and rather prickly professional 
 pride humbled. He is nettled that the negro does not 
 believe in him, and shivers even in the sunshine when 
 he recalls Voltaire's biting phrase about pouring " drugs 
 of which we know little into bodies of which we know 
 less." A good treatment in Europe can be fatal in 
 Africa. Mercury, for example, specific among Europeans, 
 is, dose for dose, certain death to a negro. A proof this, 
 of Voltaire's phrase. 
 
 The commoner pest is the malingerer who wants your 
 healing balm. Balm, of course, in a bottle, the said 
 bottle to possess a cork — for is she not in a sinking con- 
 dition ? Round the corner, in brisk business fashion, 
 out goes the medicine and in goes the snuff, the bottle 
 with the cork having seemingly saved this sinking sable 
 sister. The same lady this who treats your Grospel in 
 the same way, swallows the sermon and spits out the 
 salvation. Contrast their treatment of one of their own 
 old devil-doctors. He, oh, he is revered, and all 
 because he makes them pay through the nose, even 
 demanding an initial fee, Chiteo, before he stoops to 
 take any case in hand. The real professional he. One 
 such I found threatening a patient with sudden gunshot- 
 death if he failed to find the fees — had cured his man and 
 then proposed to kill him for the cure ! He laughed at 
 
FARTHEST, BUT SHUT, IN 181 
 
 me for manifestly saving a dysentery case with lead and 
 opium and getting nothing for it — he would have shot 
 the very man he had cured. In other words, would have 
 given him the lead without the opium. 
 
 * * * 
 
 But what is this Mushidi who thus drags his weary, 
 wicked way through these pages ? 
 
 Here is his history in a nutshell. Long ago, as a 
 mere adventurer, he wriggled into the Lufira valley from 
 the Far East, his followers numbering three men plus his 
 wife, Kapapa — grand total, five souls. He is heading 
 for Mpande, the Sanga Copper King, this chief having 
 covenanted friendship with Mushidi's father, Kalasa. 
 Here, then, you have the thin edge of the wedge of this 
 future despotism, for this Bulunda covenant is of 
 genuine sanctity among raw, unsophisticated natives. 
 More than a mere chance acquaintance, he it is, this 
 covenanted " friend," who must stick closer than a 
 brother. 
 
 Now, the brother, or brothers, as in the case of 
 this Copper King, had failed him at the crucial point, 
 and is there not a Bantu proverb that declares a brother 
 is born for adversity ? Yet here was Mpande attacked 
 from the North by Lubans, all his harem kidnapped, 
 and no Sanga kinsman forthcoming to lend a fraternal 
 hand — this, forsooth, in the teeth of the basic Bantu 
 proverb-law that a brother is horn for adversity. Who 
 ever dared in Africa to fly in the face of a proverb ? Is 
 it not the smallest possible means of conveying the largest 
 
182 THINKING BLACK 
 
 amount of wisdom ? But here in the nick of time succour 
 does arrive. Look at this travel-stained band of four 
 men and a woman filing into the Sanga stockade at sun- 
 down : is not this Mushidi, son of the covenanted "friend," 
 Kalasa ? Truly, here is a friend that sticketh closer 
 than a brother. And there the whole story begins, yea, 
 there also it ends, for there is nothing more to tell. 
 Mushidi said, " tTy suis,fy reste." A born manipulator of 
 mankind, he made his dispositions accordingly, and with a 
 mere handful of men followed up the Lubans, attacked 
 by night, and rescued the kidnapped Sanga folks. Watch 
 the momentous sequel. There and then, in the double 
 heat of gratitude to the " friend " and rancour to the 
 deserting " brother," a solemn pact was sealed : punning 
 a variant on the old proverb, the grateful Copper King 
 in one historic precedent cut ofi" all his blood kinsmen 
 "without a shilling" in the declaration: "A friend in 
 need is a brother indeed ! Thou, Mushidi, art my 
 Nswana, or heir apparent ; on thee only I bestow the 
 Omande shell ! " Now, here in this daring but dangerous 
 ignoring of sacred blood kinsmanship you have the 
 slumbering casus belli of the long-subsequent revolt of 
 the Sanga tribe. Here, too, you have the mainsprings 
 of Mushidi's bloody policy in these later j^'ears — does he 
 not know that on the first sign of weakness the real 
 aboriginal lords of the Sanga soil will give his foreign 
 carcase to the fowls of the air ? Here, too, you find 
 Mushidi's subtle reason for the building of a negro 
 cosmopolitan state — does he not know that in this 
 
FARTHEST, BUT SHUT, IN 183 
 
 vast polyglot capital the aboriginal Sanga folks are 
 outvoted ? 
 
 Let it not be supposed, however, that to root out the 
 aborigines is an easier thing to perform than to plan. 
 These lords of the copper country, I have explained, are 
 the Va Sanga, and a very poor sort of tribe of Judah, 
 because their totem is "The Lion." Copying the lion, 
 they alone boast a bearded manhood, and the longer the 
 beard the more ideal the Sanga man. They spend years 
 on the task of teaching this tribal beard to make a 
 wonderful copy of Felis leo, and the Sanga man's heart- 
 break is when he can only imitate a billygoat. The black 
 Sanga showing his white teeth through the foliage of a 
 long black beard, and rolling his " r's " like the Northum- 
 brian burr — this is all the portrait you need of him. Yet 
 he has the real title-deeds, and when Mushidi trained 
 these Va Sanga as elephant-hunters he little guessed that 
 one day, in revolt, they would draw a most careful bead 
 on every Yeke man sighted in the bush. 
 
 ( Later. ) 
 This negro potentate is nothing if not superlative, and 
 quite early in his curious career he resolves, in a blaze of 
 tinsel glory, to wed a "white wife." So, with all his 
 Eastern antipathies, he turns naturally to the AVest Coast, 
 and in the pliant Portuguese sees the very men who will 
 negotiate the dirty "deal." Are they not keen black 
 slavers, and might they not return the compliment by 
 selling him a white wife ? He even presented his heathen 
 compliments to His Excellency the Governor of St. Paul 
 
184 THINKING BLACK 
 
 de Loanda, requesting the hand of any of his young 
 daughters — the ivory dowry fixed at thirty tusks. Fail- 
 ing in this, his quest out along the Benguella road was 
 more successful. The stinging sarcasm of the proposal 
 w^as of course quite lost on the degraded Portuguese, and 
 one grim day, yes ! " Madam Mushidi " actually arrived 
 from the far West. What a zenith hour for Bluebeard 
 when that daring item, so long down in his programme, 
 was marked off as fact stranger than fiction. Then it was 
 he proclaimed himself by the name " Telwatelwawatel- 
 wanekumwineputu " — the spelling is mine, reader, the 
 pronunciation thine. This means, " The always-spoken- 
 of-one, spoken-of-even-in-the-Courts-of-Europe," and the 
 title is a one-word unit rattled ofi" breathlessly with no 
 pause. ^ But Mushidi was far too clever a person to see 
 anything exactly as it was, nor did he dream of those 
 domestic bickerings in store for His Majesty. A plain 
 man had married a brilliant woman, but what plain man 
 wants a blaze of fireworks at his fireside ? Certainly not 
 this type of woman, for I once heard her call Mushidi *' a 
 pig." Maria de Fonseca was her name, her father a 
 Portuguese ofiicer ; the proud brother being the famous 
 (or notorious) Senhor Coimbra, who lived west of 
 Bailundu. 'The same rogue this, Louren90 da Souza 
 Coimbra, who with his gang of fifty-two slaves tied in 
 lots of seventeen or eighteen, fell in with Lovett Cameron 
 
 ^ If you ask me how to pronounce this long-as-a-coniet name, may I 
 parenthetically reply that it is done the way a fjreat man said he pronounced 
 " Chicago " ? "I never pronounce it," said he. 
 
FARTHEST, BUT SHUT, IN 185 
 
 in Luba country. This man wrote a dying charge com- 
 mitting the guardianship of his empress-niece to me, and 
 Maria de Fonseca was always very clannish to her own 
 colour, calling them "brothers." "Queen Caf^-au-lait " 
 is a happy description of her own pigment, but Mushidi 
 always condescendingly calls her " our white sister." The 
 sombre complacency of this degrading union is the 
 dreariest part of it all, the Portuguese having merely sold 
 the woman for a few hundred pounds. From the Mushidi 
 standpoint, however, what he needed badly was an awe- 
 inspiring prestige so great that the tribes lining his trade 
 route out to the Atlantic will not dare to molest his 
 caravans. For like the old Wagogo tricks on the road 
 East to Zanzibar these Luvale live on the looting of 
 passing caravans, and no sooner does a caravan pass into 
 the Interior than these Luvale begin to plot its pro- 
 spective plunder on the return journey. Thus even 
 Mushidi's slave clientele run a risky game, for their road 
 out west is bristling with Luvale " gas-pipe " guns. Sold 
 by the stupid Biheans to the sly Luvale, the very guns 
 they sold were pointed against them. This is why 
 Kavungu is the great half-way point on which all home- 
 ward-bound Biheans concentrate ; and only when they 
 have massed in their thousands will they dare to sally out 
 on the western road. Hence, then, the diplomacy of 
 plannino" this Portuguese marriage, for with effusive 
 flattery Mushidi was told it would link his capital with 
 the Courts of Europe. 
 
 Infatuated with this daring link, he even resolved to 
 
186 THINKING BLACK 
 
 ape European ways, aud one caravan he actually loaded 
 up with ivory, the stringent instructions being to take it 
 out to the thousand-miles-ofF ocean and receive as pay- 
 ment only English earthenware goods. Long months 
 elapsed before the ambitious wanderers returned, the 
 eloquent rattle-tattle of the loads of doomed earthenware 
 being ominously metallic and tell-tale. When Homer at 
 the dawn of history reminded the human race of the 
 possibility of a slip between the cup and the lip, he little 
 guessed what a vision of smashed cups would meet the 
 eye of Mushidi as he gazed on those broken dreams of 
 earthenware. Plates and cups, bowls and saucers, all 
 broken to atoms, yet all solemnly taken out of the boxes 
 with exasperating good humour. Each fragment judged 
 to be a thing of beauty and a joy for ever. Even the 
 smallest chips of china, with infantine gurgles of delight, 
 were strung round the neck as ornaments, the handles of 
 the cups innovating a new fashion in earrings. Such was 
 Mushidi's attempt to take the kingdom of civilisation by 
 force. And that fragile china is an eloquent enough 
 symbol of the very civilisation he coveted, which 
 smashed in his hands. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 Vice Versa 
 
"With joyful enthusiasm they [the Britons] 
 applauded this speech [of Galgacus], in their 
 barbarian fashion, with songs and murmurs, and 
 discordant exclamations." Tacitus. 
 
 " Most of the inland inhabitants [of Britain] do not 
 sow corn, but live on milk and flesh, and are clad in 
 skins. All the Britons, indeed, dye themselves with 
 woad, which gives a bluish colour, and thus they are 
 more alarming to look upon in battle. They wear 
 their hair long, and have every part of their body 
 shaved except their head and upper lip." C^sar. 
 
 "A group of ten and even twelve have wives in 
 common, and particularly brothers among brothers, 
 and parents among their children, but if there be 
 any issue by these wives, they are reputed to be the 
 children of those to whose house each respectively 
 was first brought as a bride." C^sar. 
 
 "Some people . . . may be Rooshans, and others 
 may be Prooshans; they are born so, and will 
 please themselves. Them which is of other naturs 
 thinks different." {Mrs. Gamp.) Uickens. 
 
 iBt 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 Vice Versa 
 
 J\¥7' HEREIN the reader discovers 
 
 that a tyrant is a man who finds 
 
 his happiness in the misery of other people. 
 
 YET this kind of thing goes on and on, not the West 
 Coast only but the East, not the East only but the 
 South, a constant stream of these Mushidi caravans 
 worming their way out to all the Coast settlements. There 
 they gorge themselves with so-called civilisation ; there, 
 too, many are sucked into the whirlpool of gin-boozing, 
 and dozens disappear from mortal ken, the probable prey of 
 bandits paying them out in their own Mushidi coin. All 
 along the East Coast you can find a Mushidite who, when 
 he first sighted the Ocean, resolved never to leave it. And 
 there he is to-day, a prosperous trader or the like, Arab 
 skull-cap stuck impudently on his head, with all the old 
 Hodge marks of his youth gone. " Absconded" is the 
 English way of phrasing this runaway's action, but he had 
 no compunction in charging Mushidi 100 per cent com- 
 mission on the long Ocean journey, thus crying quits. 
 Did not the king claim 100 per cent from the defaulter's 
 own father ? 
 
 188 
 
190 THINKING BLACK 
 
 At our end of the line, too, this identical thing is 
 happening, many an Arab arriving at Miishidi's capital 
 never again to leave it. Mere packmen as such often are, 
 Mushidi politely plunders the trader — with the man's own 
 permission, the bargain being a dark affair in which the 
 new-comer is presented with a wife and fields in exchange 
 for the trade goods of some defrauded Coast merchant. 
 Never will Mr. Packman sight the sea again, and never 
 will the owner of the goods touch even a farthing in the 
 pound. Thus Mushidi squares accounts with his commer- 
 cial foes. Does the seductive Coast rob him of his caravans ? 
 Then he will retaliate and pleasantly plunder a venture- 
 some Arab of another man's money. But by no manner 
 of means are you to imagine that this tit-for-tat trickery 
 is barren of result. Truth demands the candid confession 
 that this alone is the thing an African can understand. 
 Lex talionis is written in his bones, and it is only when 
 two rival factions are united in a common bond of horror 
 of each other that they desist from crime. 
 
 * * # 
 
 But what about the Portuguese wife? Poor Queen 
 Maria de Fonseca ! Some ladies realise that their fortune 
 is invested in their face, and naturally expect to draw 
 interest on the said capital. Maria de Fonseca, alone of 
 all her colour among a million blacks, found her capital 
 invested not in her face but in her skin, and drew cent 
 per cent interest accordingly. Financial interest as well 
 as social ditto ; for the lady who boasted — " My face is my 
 fortune, sir ! " she said — well knew that her boasted beauty, 
 
VICE VERSA 191 
 
 like wealth, is easily lost, whereas a white skin is a capital 
 that is at par in Africa as long as life lasts. Her favourite 
 affectation in dress these days is the wearing of loud velvet 
 in voluptuous folds : blue, red, or yellow velvet one day, and 
 brown or green the next. Arriving in the Interior, not 
 by any means in the first blush of maidenhood, here she 
 is frivolling about the capital, and hating the whole harem 
 of rivals. Many an envenomed glance she shoots at an 
 enemy, and many a plot she hatches for the downfall of 
 some poor harmless soul. Talking Chiluba with a fierce 
 flippancy, she it is who. Lady Macbeth-like, urges Mushidi 
 on to his deeds of blood. ^ 
 
 (20th December 1890.) 
 One of the shrewdest revenue-raising tricks of Mushidi 
 is the institution of a sort of Order of the Garter : the 
 " Omande shell" decoration it is called. This amounts to 
 the German status of Grand Duke : independent chiefs as 
 far East as Ushiland (Mirambo, for instance) come West 
 here to do fealty and receive the investiture. Revenue is 
 Mushidi's idea in all this, and the fees are exorbitantly 
 high, slaves paid away in gangs. And all this for the 
 coveted boon of the " Omande shell " status. To particu- 
 larise. Apart from the steady stream of payments made 
 
 ^ Aggressively self-conscious to the very end, her dying charge to me, 
 her " uncle," was that her white skin should be buried in a white coffin ! 
 Preached to, rain or shine, for many a weary day, she spurned the Christ, 
 Whom she thought " a fool " for " dying like a sheep." Only once to my ken 
 she patted Heaven on the back approvingly for having a toilet of "white 
 robes," which she thought would suit her complexion ! One day, with tears 
 in her eyes, she broke down and sobbed, "A slave ! yes I They sold me like 
 a mere chattel when I was a young girl." 
 
192 THINKING BLACK 
 
 by the aspirant from the very first day he sets foot in the 
 capital, watch what happens during the last few minutes 
 of the ceremony. Greedy all the way through, the officials 
 now become vulpine, and instead of frankly placing the 
 white shell on his head and finishing the business, they 
 begin at his toes and propose to make six greedy ascending 
 pauses before the crown of his head is reached. That is 
 to say, each halt must pay toll for the Omande's upward 
 progress, and the shell sullenly remains on the toes of the 
 would-be Grand Duke until he pays a slave for its upward 
 advance. The " toe " slave being paid down as currency, 
 the shell may now gingerly ascend to the ankle, when 
 another halt is declared and another slave paid away to 
 trickery. The second toll having been thus paid, " ankle " 
 slave his name, the shell now tardily ascends via the right 
 side, and half-way up to the knee another ominous halt is 
 declared for another slave to be paid away. And so on, 
 to the tune of six slaves, these final fees are paid — a mere 
 drop this in the ocean of greed. 
 
 tP tF ^F 
 
 To have a proper bird's-eye picture of our surroundings 
 you must think of this black Babylon as a raging sea of 
 slavery : Lubans from the North, Lamba people from the 
 South, Lunda from the East, Ushi and Vemba from the 
 South-East. The flotsam of negro humanity, here they 
 are, so to speak, washed up on the shores of the capital, 
 all jabbering out their own patois, and all daily taking on 
 more local colour and simulating a sort of black cockney- 
 ism. One of these, snatched from slavery, was the lad 
 
VICE VERSA 193 
 
 Sankuru, and this is how it came about. His father and 
 kinsmen were killed off in the attack on their village, and 
 the little son was put down at Mushidi's feet in the same 
 row as his relatives' skulls. These skulls Mushidi formally- 
 put his foot on, by way of " trampling on the necks of his 
 enemies," but the boy was spared and came to us. Picture 
 that little black boy sitting down with his hand on his 
 father's skull, like a young English schoolboy toying with 
 a football. Espousing the cause of the slave as we boast 
 of doing, Mushidi often twits us with our ignorance of 
 their wild ways. 
 
 Alas ! it is true, they are a moral mass of putre- 
 faction ; but the negro himself explains it all in his 
 luminous proverb : " Slave status causes slave state." 
 Body bondage means soul bondage. And so the days 
 pass, these polyglot slaves swarming round the king like 
 gadflies. Never before has such a mass weltered in Central 
 Africa, for a real black Babylon is his insane idea. A born 
 linguist, as I have said, Mushidi day by day pours out 
 cataracts of vituperation on the bowed heads of his 
 pudding-stone population. "Son of a dog!" and "Son 
 of the dust ! " are the customary compliments he pays 
 even to his own elder brother, Likuku. Vaunting himself 
 to be not a man but a "wild beast," he roars more than 
 he speaks, and I suppose the Shakespearean comment on 
 it all would be the sarcasm in A Midsummer Night's 
 Dream — " Well roared, Lion ! " This Mushidi roar, 
 though, is really the most hopeful part of his harangue. 
 The real danger is when he opens his mouth wide and 
 
194 THINKING BLACK 
 
 then surprises his listeners with a shrill falsetto treble. 
 Then it is the death-warrant is shrieked : " Die ! son of 
 a dog, son of the dust." The mere torrential flow of 
 language is often an escape safety-valve, just as, on the 
 contrary, a silent Mushidi is an omen of his " nursing 
 his wrath to keep it warm." No mere figure of speech 
 this, for, night and day, it is a fatal fact that the fuse of 
 Mushidi's fury is always burning, and the mine may 
 explode at any moment. The Luban idiom for these 
 explosions of anger is the almost facetious expression, 
 " his kettle boiling over " (Futuma). Yet, doomed to 
 wrath as they are, some of the slaves are so precocious 
 that they can die without winking. With a strange 
 saturnine humour, they even crack a joke within an inch 
 of death. A sort of lull between the lava showers is the 
 idea. Literally "in the jaws of death," as an audience 
 of Mushidi is called, there they are, cracking their joke 
 even when the said jaws are in the act of crunching them. 
 And why ? Only the pure nonchalance of fatalism. Some 
 are erratically quite lively when " the hour " has come ; 
 hence their own negro death-ditty : — 
 
 " Oh ! when the tortoise in the fire is dying, 
 'Tis then he sends the fire-brands flying." 
 
 Into this stubborn slave element, then, Mushidi, with 
 great, and it must be admitted almost justified severity, 
 carries death with derision. He merely reckons it all so 
 much rank growth that has to be cut down. Many a 
 time I plead for a doomed man's life, and many a time 
 
VICE VERSA 195 
 
 Mushidi retorts that "Slave blood is bad blood." On 
 the surface, certainly, he is right, for all who have worked 
 among slaves know that bondage of body induces also 
 bondage of brain. That is to say, as the slave has been 
 valued only as a current coin in commerce, he fatalistically 
 accepts the valuation and really becomes as dead and 
 metallic to all human susceptibilities as a literal coin. 
 Why then be surprised ? Men who have no rights 
 cannot justifiably be complained of for having any 
 wrongs. Yet hundreds of African travellers have ignored 
 this negro truism and slandered the slave because his 
 degrading status has degraded likewise his state. It is 
 ridiculous for a man to go and treat a negro as though he 
 were a demon, and then express surprise that he is not 
 an angel. Even we Missionaries are reaping the harvest 
 of this oppression, for the worst type of convert is a 
 redeemed slave. The man is still in a fog, and has not 
 yet shaken off the chattel idea even in the glorious idea 
 of the Gospel. Is this the reason why Gordon of 
 Khartoum was betrayed by the two men he had recently 
 released from captivity ? Who threw the bomb that 
 killed the Czar Alexander? Who, if not a liberated 
 slave ? And if you breed slavery in the bone for centuries, 
 how can you annul it all by the cash payment of an hour ? 
 There is a magic key even for this lock, however, and it 
 is found in the fact that the only way to open another 
 man's heart is by opening yours to him. I find that the 
 message that comes from the heart will contrive to reach 
 other hearts. So literally is he a mere captive coin that, 
 
196 THINKING BLACK 
 
 on the exchange value of two sixpences for a shilling, 
 I have seen two boys bartered for one man. One such 
 boy I have already referred to, and only do so again to 
 remind you that his name is " Sikispence," representing 
 his exact market value in Lubaland, one coloured handker- 
 chief at 6d. 
 
 {lOth February.) 
 From the East many emigrants have trickled in, the 
 trans-Luapula Vemba people preponderating. They it is 
 who have advised the king to substitute the punishment 
 of " hand-lopping " for theft, instead of the death penalty, 
 and this has been the source of much uproarious debate at 
 Court. The cadaverous native logic is so elucidatory of 
 "thinking black" that I repeat it. When Mushidi 
 twitted them with the absurdity of the thing, these 
 Eastern folks argued the point at great length, and with 
 much frothing at the mouth. " We cut ojBf the hand," 
 said they, " because the hand steals." " I," laughed Mushidi, 
 "stab them in the heart, because the hand never stole 
 anything yet, it is the heart who is the thief." This, too, 
 is Mushidi's argument against tearing out the eyes with 
 fish-hooks as a punishment for adultery. " Eyes ? " says 
 he, "the real eyes are in the heart, and death is the only 
 true blindness." They laugh, but Mushidi has both law 
 and logic with him. Clever at repartee as he is, the 
 twinkling old tyrant fairly routed them with his " summing 
 up " on this mutilation subject. The king loquitur : " I 
 dreamed a dream, and lo ! I saw that the human Heart 
 and the human Face had a quarrel. Objected the Heart to 
 
VICE VERSA 197 
 
 the Face : ' Why did you not groan just now ? Why laugh ? ' 
 Retorted the Face : ' The cheeks only do what the Heart 
 commands.' Yea, further, I dreamed a dream, and lo, 
 I, Mushidi, heard a loud racking cough, most painful to 
 the cougher. Said the Heart to the cough : ' Oh, you bad, 
 you cruel cough, to rack me so with your coughing.' 
 Said the cough to the Heart : * Bad and cruel ? How can 
 I be bad, coming up as I do from the depths of such a good 
 Heart as you ? ' " 
 
 Not these Vemba folks only but many another droll 
 emigrant tried to trek in towards Bunkeya to seek his 
 fortune. For when this Mushidi leapt into the light of 
 history in the Interior, the good news spread, and many 
 a young man out East, catching the spirit of the thing, 
 resolved to go West and win to wealth and lands of his 
 own. But Mushidi, so to speak, like the dog he was, 
 snarled, stuck to his bone and showed his malevolent 
 teeth. He would none of them. Scared off some of the 
 adventurers would not be, however, and to this day in 
 the North, Lunungwa, ^wena, Kaseva, are still in posses- 
 sion of lands won by their own prowess. Lands, mark 
 you, that gracefully avoid Mushidi's boundary on the 
 Lualaba East. 
 
 One famous failure there was, however, and he resolved 
 
 to go down to history as " a bad 'un" — Katigile his name. 
 
 Ostensibly a copper trader like all the Yeke band, he was 
 
 only one more pirate ship out on the Central African 
 
 ocean of commerce. But K., dismally defeated as he was, 
 
 went away back East with hate in his heart and a soul 
 13 
 
198 THINKING BLACK 
 
 baked hard in the fire of adversity. If he could not die 
 famous he would end infamous, so he planned a devilish 
 deed. Yonder far East, and tucked away in between the 
 Wanyamwezi Hills, was his natal village, where the pest of 
 chigoes had never yet come ; well, here is his chance : 
 why not import a plague and die infamous ? This would 
 ease his endless pressure of penury, this, the mad idea 
 that his name, as a grey monument in history, would ever 
 be linked with the introduction of such a deadly plague. 
 So he dared the deed and cursed his native land. The 
 collecting of "seed" chigoes was too easy not to succeed, 
 and he safely let them loose on their bad business of hate. 
 Years after, when the townsfolk out East fought in a frenzy 
 of determination to eradicate that chigoe pest, many a 
 curse was linked with Katigile's name. Yet some people 
 say the Devil has no Missionaries, and no propaganda ! 
 The heart of man never showed more truly the bad stuff 
 of which it is made than just here in this baneful deed. 
 Even Katigile himself died with his toes eaten by chigoes, 
 cursed with his own cruel curse. 
 
 * * * 
 
 So the days drag past, seemingly a mere hyphen and 
 connecting link. Mushidi holds on to us, and we hold on 
 to the country. " If you are tied in ropes," says the 
 proverb, *' the more you tug the tighter the knots become," 
 so even here we learn to bide God's time. (Is it not in 
 the Captivity Epistles that Paul writes of the Church's 
 heavenly calUng ? Seated in a dark Roman prison, was 
 it not just then he claimed to be seated in the heaveulies ?) 
 
VICE VERSA 199 
 
 The sorest thorn in our side these days is the resident 
 Arabs at the capital. They make a dead set against us, 
 buttering up " The Sultan " for hours and plotting darkly. 
 Every time we pass their camp going on to Mushidi's they 
 curse Christ with bitter blasphemy. The revengeful relish 
 in their invectives is the darkest smudge in all our exper- 
 ience ; verily, the poison of asps is under their tongue. 
 Yet they pray for hours and by clockwork from the 
 highest to the lowest — pray to God and curse His Anointed. 
 No wonder the arm-chair Englishman misunderstands it 
 all. " On one occasion," says Augustus Hare, *' I was 
 present at a garden party given by Lady Salisbury in 
 honour of the Sultan of Zanzibar. In the middle of it 
 the Sultan came up to the hostess and said, ' Now, please, 
 it is time for me to say my prayers. I should like to go 
 to your room and be alone for ten minutes. I always do 
 this four times a day.' The Archbishop of Dublin was 
 so delighted with this, that on being presented to the 
 Sultan he said, ' I am glad to have the honour of being 
 presented to a man who has made a promise and 
 kept it.'" But contrast the same sort of Zanzibar 
 Arab here with us in the African bush, not in an 
 English flower garden. Kuomba Muungu is the great 
 Arab phrase, " praying to God," but locally this formula 
 has become the term for murder, Tu na hwenda 
 kuomha Muungu being the double equivalent for "Let 
 us be off" to prayers," or (save the mark) " Let us be 
 off to kill." It does not often happen that staid old 
 English can hit off such gruesome drolleries, but you have 
 
200 THINKING BLACK 
 
 the identical idea when you misspell " pray " as " prey " — 
 these devout Arabs do nothing but prey. Theirs it is, at 
 any rate, to explain why Kuomba Muungu doubly denotes 
 prayer and plunder, worship and war — only another proof 
 this, that we are the poles asunder. 
 
 When the thermometer goes up the barometer gener- 
 ally goes down. Even so Mr. Arab and Mr. Missionary : 
 your A is his Z ; your beginning, his end — literally so, 
 I mean, for the whole ABC of this Arab problem is 
 only a mere matter of his own actual Arabic ABC. 
 There, in that Semitic alphabet of his, beginning like 
 Hebrew at the right and working across to the left side 
 of the paper, there, I say, you have the whole typical 
 story of Arab and Englishman. Always missing each 
 other and never meeting, we work the page of life from 
 left to right, and he glories in doing the diametric 
 opposite. Muruturutu laughed at me in disdainful Board 
 School fashion for reading out the Bible from left to 
 right : it obviously offended his academical susceptibilities 
 as much as seeing a native pretending to read a book 
 upside down. '* The blind man has bought a looking- 
 glass ! " is their high-flown hint that all such pretence of 
 reading is of no value. Can you eat your dinner standing 
 on your head ? The which is a parable, I repeat, for the 
 difference between us is one of standpoint, but stand- 
 points so mutually antagonistic that blood would flow in 
 rivers, as in the old days of the Saracen conquest, but for 
 the English preponderance in quick-firers. The Arab 
 himself sees worlds of meaning in this sharp contrast of 
 
VICE VERSA 201 
 
 the two adverse races beginning to write at the opposite 
 sides of a sheet of paper, and certain it is, that the gulf 
 cutting off the Arab from the European is "as far as the 
 East is from the West." 
 
 Take the Gospel. " Believe or die," says he — *' Believe 
 and live," say we. Take polygamy. We proclaim Christ 
 born of a woman, and the dignity of her sex : last at the 
 cross, first at the tomb — they glory in polygamy as the 
 only true code of marital morals. We crusade against 
 the bondage of the slave — they are the notorious slavers 
 of Central Africa. We quote the Golden Rule, " Do unto 
 others," etc., as the Christ's incipient abolition of slavery 
 — they retort with the Devil's golden rule of £ s. d. 
 We prove that to barter human beings is to deny that 
 man was made in the image of God — they quote 
 Mohammed who enjoins the selling of a slave. Now 
 precisely as with this sharp cleavage of slavery, so too 
 with much more. Take the Arab doctrine of force, as 
 against the Christian doctrine of persuasion : here you 
 have the most thrilling contrast of all. We point to 
 Christ inculcating a crusade of love and peace in His 
 very last commandment : "Go ye into all the world." 
 They point to Mohammed among his last acts planning 
 a bloody war of extermination. 
 
 (Later.) 
 
 One incident I recall, a tragedy that burnt on my 
 mind indelibly this Arab versus Englishman contrast. 
 It was after the smash-up. A great Arab, Kasokota his 
 nom de guerre, is condemned to death by court martial 
 
202 THINKING BLACK 
 
 — crime, the usual charG;e of higjh treason. The Belofian 
 Oommandant quaintly notifies me, as Missionary, that up 
 to twelve noon I can see to the Arab's soul, and after 
 that, by the clock, he will deal with his body. So there, 
 sitting under the acacia tree, " this side of the portal," we 
 talk for eternity. Not many minutes now, and his 
 despairing, dying cry will go ringing up to God. But I 
 soon discover that the convict chain round his neck is 
 only a type of that other Koran chain binding this 
 dignified Arab, soul and body. Rubbing shoulders as 
 we are, the old gulf of East and West yawns between us 
 a thousand miles. At the outset, he clutches at me as a 
 drowning man will clutch at anything, and beseeches me 
 to plead for his life. Urges eloquently, that here he is 
 " dying like a sheep," and not a member of the Court 
 knew one word of his language. With alacrity and in 
 spite of official umbrage, once, twice, thrice I go to the 
 Commandant with the doomed Arab's plea, only to be told 
 with a civil stifi'ness that my business is to save him from 
 his eternal doom. When, however, I get back to the 
 prisoner under the acacia and tell him how sadly sealed 
 is his fate, the door of Mr. Arab's heart slams on my 
 Gospel. He starts to preach to me, if you please. 
 Repentant ? No. He dies like Lord Mohammed, wishing 
 for bloody war. Here is a man quite certain that we 
 English never can perform the Arab acrobatic feat of 
 crossing the narrow bridge of Sirat into Paradise. This 
 bridge of vast length, as narrow as a hair, the edge thereof 
 as sharp as a scimitar, spans the abyss of hell, but all 
 
VICE VERSA 203 
 
 impenitent Englishmen will fall headlong before a puff of 
 wind sent by Allah. There, in that one Blondin boast of 
 the Arab acrobats, you have the volume of their self- 
 righteous ideas : to the right, Jehennam, or hell ; to the 
 left, Jenneh, or Paradise ; and every mortal must walk the 
 razor-edged Sirat barefoot, eternal destiny the issue of 
 this religious tight-rope venture. The Gospel of the Christ 
 Who saves His own murderers and makes a Paul out of 
 a Saul, His diamonds out of soot, is nonsense to them. 
 What Mr. Arab preaches is a message full of all the old 
 elemental passions of the race : an eye-for-eye, tooth-for- 
 tooth recrimination. Two hours later, I saw that proud 
 Arab's dripping, newly washed garments hanging out 
 to dry, each doleful drip telling the sinister tale that 
 the executioner had claimed them as his fee for the dark 
 deed accomplished. Drip ! drip ! from the dead man's 
 clothes came the echo of their own awful Arab warning : 
 " There are no fans in hell." He lived hard, worked 
 hard, died hard, and then how hard to go to hell after 
 all! 
 
 {12th March.) 
 These roaming Arabs bring in rumours of far-off 
 Missionaries, which reminds me that this chronicle is not 
 an autobiography, and my narrative has run on too much 
 in the " nasty nominative." Let us think of others now. 
 Farthest in geographically as we are, it is also our privi- 
 lege to be farthest in ecclesiastically — sort of Scouts 
 of the Church of God, if you please. Take our bearings. 
 In 1890 the Missionary Map runs thus: Out in the Far 
 
204 THINKING BLACK 
 
 West, our nearest^ ecclesiastical neighbours in the Garen- 
 ganze are those splendid American Board men, distant 
 roughly 800 miles in Bihe. Often when lonely, the 
 very thought of noble Currie trimming God's lamp at 
 Chisamba comes in on us like a whiff of ozone from 
 the far Atlantic. Then, turning South, our nearest 
 Christian neighbour is the sainted Coillard far down 
 in the Barotse Valley, 600 miles away. Looking North 
 towards the Equator, and a good thousand miles off, are 
 the graves of the Combers on the Congo. Nearer still, 
 our good friends on Tanganyika Plateau, the L.M.S. of 
 historic renown : my beloved friend John May was one 
 of their noble men. But the best wine comes last, and 
 the crowning boon of all is Livingstonia on the far East- 
 ern skyline. Four hundred miles distant, there you have 
 " the Bishop of Central Africa," Dr. Robert Laws. Inter- 
 denominational in the best sense, this good man's sunny, 
 hospitable heart has a place for all of us, and the only 
 furlough I ever had was a happy year's sojourn out East 
 at Livingstonia. Thus, having viewed the place in its 
 deep penetralia, I know whereof I affirm : there you learn 
 how true it is that the seemingly cold Scotch are only 
 icebergs with volcanoes underneath ; thaw the northern 
 ice and you get to the Scottish fire. Dr. Laws it was, who 
 cut into the lazy lotus life of the Nyassaland negro, and 
 made him honour hard work. A glance at a Livingstonia 
 Report reveals a sturdy type of service that taboos a mere 
 mist of fine words, and clings to sane statistics. The 
 
 ^ See p. 138, ante. 
 
VICE VERSA 205 
 
 Industrial Department, particularly, turns out a robust 
 type of pick-and-shovel Christian, and this healthy thing 
 has no doubt saved the land from a great reactionary 
 apostasy. Thanks to Livingstonia, the Garenganze got 
 its New Testament^ and teachers, and centred in Dr. Laws' 
 great enterprise are the hopes of wide Central Africa. 
 In a quaint old map of Africa, published in the guess- 
 work days of 1815, the only brilliant bit of work therein 
 was a true prophecy of Livingstonia. After creeping 
 cautiously round the African coast-line, the daring carto- 
 graphist put down his prophetic pen near Lake Nyassa, or 
 " Maravi " as it w^as then called, and wrote : " Mountains 
 of Lupata, or the Spine of the World." Now, all this 
 was delightful, because authentic prophecy, for in the 
 long-subsequent Livingstonia that appeared in those 
 very latitudes, the word " backbone " is the keynote 
 of it all. 
 
 * Through the instrumentality of Dr. Laws, our Luban translation of the 
 New Testament was published by the National Bible Society of Scotland. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 Shut In, but Almost Out 
 
"On that hard Pagan world disgust 
 And secret loathing fell : 
 Deep weariness and sated lust 
 Made human life a hell." 
 
 " Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard 
 
 his spots?" Jeremiah. 
 
 "Ye must be born again." John. 
 
 "The sun can mirror his glorious face 
 In the dewdrop on the sod; 
 And the humblest negro heart reflect 
 The life and love of God." 
 
 soS 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 Shut in, but Almost Out 
 
 T N which the reader^ being removed 
 
 one thousand miles from his nearest 
 
 shopy learns lijes greatest lesson^ that the 
 
 Infinite God is the God of the Infinitesimal, 
 
 HERE it is, on the spurs of the Bunkeya Hills, Mr. 
 Arnot first built his Mission hut-house, a solid 
 but not too ambitious structure. And here too 
 we salute those of " our own company," Messrs. Swan and 
 Faulknor. Cut off from the outside world as they are, 
 no doubt " the banner over them is love " ; but so, too, 
 there is sadly waving over their little far-away cabin 
 the yellow flag of quarantine. Faulknor, a shining saint, 
 has fouud Africa to be one long hospital of pain. Two 
 men all alone in the lonely Interior seem a poor, in- 
 adequate sort of testimony, yet so normally necessary 
 is it to be mighty in word and deed that the sick man 
 prayed while the strong man preached, and thus he also 
 serves who only stands and waits. Certainly in the 
 mouth of two witnesses, word and deed, every word was 
 established, for while able Mr. Swan preached Calvary his 
 good friend Faulknor carried the cross of pain. Bed- 
 
 209 
 
210 THINKING BLACK 
 
 ridden though he was for many a day, he soon found that 
 when God permits you to take a back seat you can have 
 a very good time. Besides, as the average African can 
 look through your body like glass, Faulknor's "living 
 epistle" was eloquent the whole day long, and ever 
 answering the challenge of the relentless negro stare. In 
 Africa our faces are our coats of arms. For all of us the 
 great danger in African mission work is, that often our 
 preacher's bow is not so tightly strung in private as in 
 public life, and the native puzzles his head over this. But 
 there was many a song of triumph even under that 
 drooping yellow flag of quarantine, and Richter perfectly 
 describes the gains this good Canadian got out of his 
 pains. The burden of Faulknor's sufi'ering may have 
 only looked to outsiders like a tombstone hung round his 
 neck, whereas in reality it was only a weight necessary to 
 keep down the diver while he was collecting pearls. God 
 in all lands must cross His Church before He can crown it, 
 and it is the late George Miiller of Bristol who tells of one 
 of the pearls brought up from these depths of suffering. 
 One day his vast enterprise on the Ashley Downs was down 
 to zero for the orphans' " daily bread," but the dinner-bell 
 rang in heaven and a much-needed gift arrived. Where 
 did it come from ? Mr. Miiller says a sick missionary from 
 the wilds of Africa was the donor — this man who had been 
 shut up in the Interior, grievously, almost permanently, 
 disabled. Yet so grateful was this bodily wreck for a safe 
 return to England that he struck his slender balance of 
 resources, and poured it all at his Master's feet. 
 
SHUT IN, BUT ALMOST OUT 211 
 
 Shunted off thus into a sort of siding, the tide of roaring 
 life sweeps past us down in the valley of the Capital, an 
 all-day stream of visitors trickling in to us among the rocks. 
 Arriving, as we do, almost empty-handed, Mushidi despises 
 us for our own impecuniosity. In harsh and unembellished 
 terms he insists that we are no " whites" at all.^ 
 
 Rooming, as we utter strangers to each other do, in 
 mud African houses, then, oh ! then is love's crucible, for 
 often incipient fever makes a good man carp at rough fare 
 — a good man, that is to say, with a bad body. How 
 many people in England quote the text about brethren 
 " dwelling in unity " who only see them in the busy 
 street, or at a week-end meeting ? Let them come out to 
 Africa and learn the trials (and triumphs) of so literally 
 dwelling in unity in a hot " station." Never out of each 
 other's sight. In moderation I am bold to suspect my 
 friend might find me passably or even mildly entertaining, 
 but in such frequent and overwhelming doses one must 
 pall on one's poor brother. The trouble is, that one is 
 tempted far too often to speak one's mind, forgetful of 
 the fact that in speaking your mind you must also mind 
 how you speak. Even the most genial of souls soon 
 surprises himself more than his friend by a snap of irrita- 
 tion quite foreign to his temperament. This is Africa at 
 its old trick of fastening on its victim, and tightening the 
 tropical grip on his soul. 
 
 1 So, too, Dr. Moloney ; in his book he pities us and cannot " help think- 
 ing that a profound mistake was committsd when the Missionaries were 
 dispatched into this barbarous country Imndreds of miles from a European 
 post." 
 
212 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Memo, for Missionaries : The closer any two bodies act 
 together, the more oil they need. Even when Mr. A. is 
 a mere echo of Mr. B., the result is that Mr. B. deplores 
 his own echo and refuses to father it. A well-balanced 
 Mission is like a well-balanced world : it is only kept right 
 by two tendencies working in opposite directions — one 
 throwing out and the other pulling in. Brother Centri- 
 fugal is only right as he is seconded by Brother Centri- 
 petal, and either dare not lack the other. I know two 
 good men who had a rare royal time together for years, 
 yet Brother A.'s favourite tune was, " In the sweet by and 
 by," and Brother B.'s, "In the sweet Now and Now\" 
 When Brother A. saw the rain, he would unerringly 
 surmise, "This will make mud," then Brother B. would 
 chime in, " This will lay the dust." Saith Brother A., " I 
 am sorry it is no better." Quoth Brother B., " I'm glad it 
 is no worse." Yet these two saints (oh yes) get along 
 happily together, because soaked deep into their souls was 
 the divine doctrine that God's Church is a complete unity 
 of various temperaments and methods. What kind of 
 music would you have without sharps and flats ? The 
 wheels of a watch, remember, move contrary to each other, 
 and thereby alone can you get a good time-keeper. 
 
 Yet show I unto you a more excellent way. Better, 
 better far the Missionary (dear, dead-and-gone Cobbe, for 
 instance) who had a happy soul balanced in equal ratio 
 by the same two laws that make the planet earth such 
 a well-balanced sphere, the one pulling him into God's 
 presence, the other driving him out in service. 
 
SHUT IN, BUT ALMOST OUT 213 
 
 Remember, as the days pass, our Western road is 
 blocked and no supplies can cross the Lualaba, but the 
 malefactors who have done it all are really benefactors. 
 Well spake Hudson Taylor, when he affectionately bade 
 us farewell, " The Devil can wall you round, but he 
 cannot roof you in." We always can reckon on the 
 bit of blue overhead. What to outsiders may seem the 
 hateful exigencies of poverty, is to us merely God remov- 
 ing the clogging weights to make good our motto : The 
 maximum of power with the minimum of machinery. 
 Granted, I say, many solid considerations against this 
 idea of our meagre Missionary pioneer outfit, but granted 
 also many obvious gains for all our pains. Mr. Lane on 
 leaving me here in the Interior after some months of the 
 bread of affliction, wrote of all his privations : " Trying 
 as things were, I would not have forgone that blessed 
 season of trial for all the luxuries of civilisation. As I 
 take a backward look my heart rejoices, and I am 
 increasingly realising the blessedness of having come forth 
 looking to the Lord alone for my supplies." Paul fondly 
 boasted of his " manner of entering in " among them, and 
 in some severe sense your initial choice of the manner of 
 entering in among an African tribe will wholly determine 
 your subsequent line of action. The efiervescent negro 
 will easily fall down and worship a caravan that parades 
 as much of the Lord Mayor's Show element about it as 
 possible. What he wants is something violently spec- 
 tacular and "striking," as he names his own word for 
 "glory." Thus out of sheer desire for your African's 
 
214 THINKING BLACK 
 
 welfare, you must needs strip yourself of impedimenta in 
 order to outwit the cupidity of the black man. 
 
 The highest compliment I have been paid in my bush 
 African wanderings was when a snob chief gave me 
 a dole of forty yards of calico as a pitying alms, because 
 I was *' out at the elbows." Of course I have since paid 
 him his own with usury, but the link binding us in 
 friendship is all the more real because the initial bounty 
 was on his part. There is nothing to be ashamed of 
 in poverty except being ashamed of it. The best pair 
 of boots I had for many a day were a Portuguese 
 convict's, bought from a negro. So, too, with a mys- 
 terious suit of clothes which 1 rescued from a slaver — 
 the fit was faultless. Far too faultless, for it clung to 
 me as tight as a wall-paper. So, too, with much more. 
 This famine and fever land in a special and extraordinary 
 way clears the field for a full display of the power of 
 His might, for man is often brought low with all his 
 shrewd contrivances, and only God can avail. The last 
 and nearest commercial banking-house in the world was 
 just one thousand miles distant on the seashore. Your 
 deposit account might be ad libitum, but your powers 
 of cashing same in the long grass were at zero. Certainly 
 the pampered civilisation of Great Britain is all on the 
 side of unbelief, for everything is too cut-and-dried, 
 and runs in a fixed groove, comes as a matter of course, 
 not as a wonder. Here, in the bush, it is delightful 
 again and again to watch how God hears you scrape 
 the bottom of the meal-barrel. Again and again, with 
 
SHUT IN, BUT ALMOST OUT 215 
 
 " dramatic neatness of Divine method," the dinner-bell has 
 gone in Heaven for my "surprise meal." 
 
 It was hinted to-day quite blandly that we must 
 be runaways rom justice. We are nobodies : where are 
 our belongings ? Yet here again we have gains for pains. ^ 
 After all, we dare not ignore the fact that the mere 
 temporalities of the Missionary, with his creaking boots, 
 do bulk far too largely in the greedy gaze of our bush 
 negro. A Missionary without God — not without supplies 
 — is like a rabbit against the Russian Empire. Oh, the 
 abysmal and abominable chasm between Mr. White and 
 Mr. Black ! The mediocre Englishman with his mass of 
 belongings is, by the negro, literally and repellently 
 called Leza Mulculu ("0 great God"). The same thing 
 this, as when some raw natives looking over a Mission 
 fence at a simple wattle-and-daub house said, " Ye are 
 the people of God : look at the size of your houses." 
 
 Even our endless praising of God before the raw 
 native is misunderstood, and certainly twice I have 
 heard a negro grunt, "Yes, well you might praise God, 
 He has been good to you." But aback of all this, 
 there is a blacker subtlety still, I mean the endless 
 negro suspicion that God is an Englishman : the bare- 
 footed Christ of rocky roads in Palestine they cannot 
 conceive. They are sure that we are the spoilt and 
 petted children of a pampered civilisation, and as they 
 
 1 Dr. Moloney's statement that not only did Mushidi call U8 " white 
 slaves," but that he also despoiled us of our goods, errs in the important 
 particular that we had no goods to despoil. 
 
216 THINKING BLACK 
 
 look at the vault of the sky curving down to meet the 
 horizon in the direction of Europe, they actually believe 
 that Heaven meets earth among the white men. No 
 wonder Malemba once interrupted a sermon of mine 
 on the murder of Christ at Golgotha with the stinging 
 retort: "Ay, you white men were a bad lot to go 
 away and kill The Best One like that : we blacks only 
 kill criminals." "And then," said he, "far from being 
 ashamed of what you have done, you come across the 
 seas to tell us you did it." That this idea is deeply 
 embedded in the negro mind can be proved by re- 
 membering that the revolting blacks of San Domingo 
 shouted out the same dread war-cry. Devastating the 
 plantations with murder and fire and led by a fanatic, 
 their bloodthirsty cries rent the air, " The whites killed 
 the Christ, let us slay all whites ! " How difi'erent the 
 fawning attitude of a sleek, well-fed " Mission " native 
 who listens to even a corrosive rebuke with a beaming 
 smile ! The fact is, these obsequious, beaming blacks 
 who make an avenue for you to pass through into their 
 country, propose to treat the Missionary precisely as you 
 in England treat the postman — that is to say, they acclaim 
 him not for what he is in himself, but for what he 
 brings. And this would be delightfully all right pro- 
 vided the negro welcomed us as a letter postman — God's 
 postman bringing God's letter. Alas ! he thinks we are 
 parcels postmen, and any of the humblest ameliorations 
 of civilisation about us develop in the negro that avarice 
 known locally as " the big eye." Thus, even when we 
 
SHUT IN, BUT ALMOST OUT 217 
 
 have drained our last drop of tea, and all the meaner 
 facilities of life have departed from our mud hut, we still 
 see Divine intent in it all. For God had only removed 
 the gilt from the gingerbread of our " white " prestige in 
 order to proclaim the poverty of the Cross. And this 
 mollified all our soreness. Christ's cause in Africa is too 
 often wounded in the house of its friends, but never so 
 grievously and gratuitously as when a Missionary of the 
 Cross beats easily all his fellow-Europeans in this matter 
 of first-class get up. The best houses, best furniture, 
 best eating, all at " The Mission." 
 
 Out towards the Atlantic Ocean our nearest shop is 
 just one thousand miles off. 
 
 One sacred calendar of mine contains the following 
 categoric and genuine gifts, " nick of time " succour we 
 call this : — 
 
 One woman — 35 baskets of flour. 
 
 Another — 25 baskets of flour, 4 baskets of green 
 vegetables. 
 
 Another — 22 baskets of green vegetables, i.e. green 
 corn, cucumbers, pumpkins, etc. 
 
 Another — 15 baskets of flour, etc. 
 
 Fifteen others might be added with totals of ten, nine, 
 eight, six and less baskets of flour, corn, etc. 
 
 "His methods are sublime, 
 His ways supremely kind ; 
 God never is before His time, 
 And never is behind." 
 
 And where is the man longing for apostolic pre- 
 
218 THINKING BLACK 
 
 cedents who would exchange these ghad trials of faith 
 for a king's ransom ? Weary in the wilderness trail, you 
 listen, and lo there is the bubbling brook by the way, 
 and drinking you do lift the head. These are mercies 
 from God's right hand. The provocative policy of our 
 entering Africa loaded up with impedimenta does not give 
 the raw African a chance really to help the Missionary : 
 he cannot conceive of such a rich Missionary being 
 honestly pinched. Give him the chance and you will 
 marvel : it will be the story of Ebed-melech the black 
 man over again. His own colour had abandoned 
 Jeremiah, and there you have the Hebrew prophet down 
 a hole, no water and sunk in the mire. The accurate 
 analogy this of an African Missionary cut oft* from his 
 ocean base and, humanly speaking, in a hole. His own 
 colour, I say, abandoned this white prophet, and then 
 it was a black man came to the rescue. What saith the 
 Scripture ? "So Ebed-melech the Ethiopian took the men 
 with him, and went into the house of the king under the 
 treasury, and took thence old cast clouts and old rotten 
 rags, and let them down by cords into the dungeon to 
 Jeremiah. And Ebed-melech the Ethiopian said unto 
 Jeremiah, Put now these cast clouts and rotten rags under 
 thine arm-holes under the cords. ... So they drew up 
 Jeremiah and took him out of the dungeon." A widow's 
 mite and a negro's rotten rags and cast-off clothes — how 
 like God to honour them with such a royal recognition. 
 
 Well it is we have no Society guaranteeing us a salary, 
 for the said Society would be politely and cleverly baflied 
 
SHUT IN, BUT ALMOST OUT 219 
 
 how to get at us with £ s. d. Shut off from our nearest 
 bank one thousand miles, surely here is a true test of faith. 
 
 (1st July.) 
 In our little mud Mission House we have a number 
 of redeemed slaves around us, but they are nearly all a 
 bad lot. Studying slavery as I am daily doing here at 
 its fountainhead in the Far Interior, this is the honest 
 deduction of it all : rug up a man from the roots of his 
 being — home, kinsmen and liberty — then transplant him as 
 captive chattel, and verily, not even the warm fostering 
 care of a rescuing Missionary can soften the grudge out 
 of him. Here, for instance, is a case in point. A band 
 of slave-children, recaptured from the Arabs, is domesti- 
 cated in a model Mission known to me. The years pass, 
 the ex-slaves are trained and fostered so painstakingly 
 that the good Lady Missionary has literally turned the 
 tables, and become the slave of the ex-slaves. Yet these 
 jet-black beauties have their growling grudge still. 
 Wondering what it all means, you push investigations, 
 and after a few exploring remarks, you find — can you 
 take it in ? — that these rescue Missionaries are only 
 reckoned the-last-therefore-the-worst link in the long 
 chain of captivity. For, remember, after all, Home is 
 sweet Home to the tiniest baby negro, and the smallest 
 of them, far away in captivity, sings a song of his 
 
 fatherland : — 
 
 " Can Vemba'8 land be old ? Never ! 
 Yes, old it may be 
 And cease to be free. 
 But Vemba is Vemba for ever." 
 
220 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Thus each gang of slaves is really a nest of hornets, and 
 patriotism is throbbing in every black breast. Try to 
 bribe this exiled slave with a sugar sop and he sniffs with 
 suspicion at the very sugar. Kwetu ! is his magic word 
 for "Home," and there is clannish courtesy in the very 
 grammar of the plural : you dare not say " My Home " 
 in broad Africa. " Our Home " is the compound family 
 formula. In fact, there is no such word as " Home " apart 
 from plural usage, which proves that enshrined within 
 the one word " Our Home " there is locked up the 
 vision of all his kinsmen dear. This astounding attempt 
 of a slave race to coin and copyright a speciality in such 
 a word as " Home " even beats its famous English rival : 
 beats it, I say, because at least we can use "Home" with 
 or without any pronoun we like, but the African has so 
 tricked the tongue that no word for " Home " exists 
 apart from a pronoun — "Our Home" or "Your Home." 
 To say mere "Home" is not merely bad form, but no 
 form at all. There is no such usage. Now, lest per- 
 ad venture this be thought mere " Exeter Hall," you must 
 stand with me, and listen to a slave crooning his 
 " logical " rhyme against the very idea of human bond- 
 age. Literally there are both rhyme and reason in the 
 words : — 
 
 "As a bird in the course of its flight, 
 On some branch will not choose to alight, 
 
 For it likes not the tree. 
 So man's heart doth resemble a bird, 
 To coerce it would be as absurd. 
 For the heart must bo free." 
 
SHUT IN, BUT ALMOST OUT 221 
 
 Surely this doggerel proves that the old phrase "as free 
 as a bird " is a world-wide metaphor. Thus you see that 
 even in grinding slavery your despised negro chattel gets 
 poetry out of his prose of life by thinking of the old 
 home in the Luban marsh where " mama " (yes, the same 
 old English word) is longing for her lost bairn. One such 
 mother I redeemed from her fifth term of slavery, the 
 story all being told in that inconsequential tone that 
 makes one proud to live and die for old Africa. For there 
 was a haggard woman explaining nonchalantly that five 
 times she had sold herself into slavery because her little 
 boy who changed bondmasters was a slave ; each time she 
 followed up her son, gladly enduring bondage under five 
 slave-owners, in order to be near her boy. This was time 
 number five when I broke her chains ! And all for 
 maternal love. That lad grew up to be one of our 
 earliest converts on Lake Mweru, many of his best 
 natural qualities coming from that slave mother. Some- 
 body was right, surely, when he said so sagely : "I think 
 it must be somewhere written that the virtues of the 
 mothers shall occasionally be visited on their children as 
 well as the sins of their fathers." 
 
 # # # 
 
 Probably, the most striking thing to be seen at the 
 Bunkeya capital is the roaring function of a "Triumph" 
 when a returning general is acclaimed as victor by the 
 assembled multitude. Never did Roman general thunder- 
 ing down the Via Appia with his victorious legions at 
 his heels feel more inflated with feat of arms. This is the 
 
222 THINKING BLACK 
 
 day when negro festivities reach their zenith and even 
 deep-dyed enemies agree to sink their grudge and run 
 with the full tide of good cheer. The Lunda man who, 
 otherwise and elsewhere, would avoid his Luban enemy as 
 though he were a pestilence, is to-day in high glee feast- 
 ing on the common bounty. Thousands and thousands 
 of slaves are here drinking themselves tipsy, the very 
 drink being the famous " barley wine " of Xenophon and 
 Tacitus. With all the sympathies and animosities of 
 cats and dogs, here you have them for one brief day 
 deceiving each other into a false fraternity as frothy as 
 their gallons of beer. 
 
 Twisting into the capital since daybreak, and from 
 all points of the compass, you might have seen the beer 
 caravans arrive, drums roaring, goats and sheep piping 
 a shrill treble to swell the noise of festivity. Every rag 
 of coloured calico is to-day sported in the sunshine, the 
 essential bit of the rig-out being a turban of some sort. 
 Meanwhile the great Mushidi, who is bent on besting his 
 imaginary rival, is in the hands of his satraps, who are 
 dressing him up for the show, the distinctive feature of 
 his purple and fine linen being a vesture, twenty or 
 thirty yards long, to which they finally add his regalia 
 of " Omande " shells. Certainly he takes the shine out 
 of everybody, for hanging round his neck, like a walk- 
 ing Christmas tree, they have dangled scissors, looking- 
 glasses, and curious sundries. 
 
 But where, you ask, is the victorious general all the 
 while ? Denied entry, he, be it noted, has been hanging 
 
SHUT IN, BUT ALMOST OUT 223 
 
 round impatiently for weeks on the remote outskirts of 
 the city, Mushidi simulating a yawn at every mention of 
 his name, and petulantly refusing "to vote" the said 
 Triumph. So true to the Roman analogy is it all, that 
 the river Lunsala has been marked off as this General's 
 Rubicon, across which he dare not come unless officially 
 notified to do so. Runners, however, are daily pouring 
 in from his camp to jog the king's memory with the acts 
 of valour of his shrewd and restless warriors, until finally, 
 out of sheer exasperation, the great " Tomboka " day is 
 named. Virtually, of course, this is the old admission 
 wrung from the Caesars by the Praetorian Guard, that the 
 King is only King because of their swords. 
 
 Mushidi's simile is better when he grudgingly agrees 
 that his army and he are related to each other as the 
 one blade of the scissors is to the other — you can only cut 
 the political cloth as they snip together. And now all is 
 open-mouthed expectancy, for Mushidi is borne aloft on a 
 zebra-skin palanquin by more than a hundred men, and a 
 far-off war-song tells of the approaching general and his 
 army. Then the royal drums answer the distant call, the 
 hoarse advancing cries quickly becoming louder and 
 louder. Here they are at last coming sprinting round the 
 corner, the advance guard flourishing their arms with 
 mimic menace, every man of them sporting one or several 
 putrid skulls with a trophy-taunt. Then comes Mukanda- 
 vantu, the general, flushed with victory, and, following 
 him, the long string of slaves captured in war. How 
 reminiscent all this of Paul glorying in the fact that he 
 
224 THINKING BLACK 
 
 was Christ's bondslave and led about in triumph as 
 Christ the Conqueror's trophy. 
 
 Swollen with pride and satisfaction, the generalissimo 
 advances with a strut into the centre of this vast sea of 
 brilliantly clad negroes, followed by the captured chiefs, 
 or prisoners of high status, hard in his wake, this line of 
 the captured tailing off in the broken-kneed dregs of 
 slavery. They are nearly all women, however, a proof 
 this that the men they fought were really masculine 
 enough to die rather than be captured — hence these heaps 
 of heads hidden in clouds of flies. One brute, you notice, 
 has three skulls tied together dangling from his mouth, 
 and Mushidi claims all these heads by formally descending 
 from his throne and putting his foot on each one : a sort 
 of trampling on the necks of his enemies, I suppose. 
 Meanwhile, the army has fired a deafening feu de joie 
 point blank in our faces, and then begins a show of sham 
 fighting during which different detachments are seen in 
 attack and retreat, now simulating a clever ambush and 
 anon springing like panthers from the grass. There is an 
 end to all this, and a facetious one. Like Nero, who was 
 vain of his music, Mushidi has the vanity to think that 
 he can — dance. Dull, dazed, and dumbfounded you, a 
 spectator, can scarcely believe your eyes when the old 
 man is seen to descend and begin his rheumatic shuffles, a 
 dancing bear indeed ! Nearly tripped by his own bunched- 
 up vesture, these contortions are a speciality, and called 
 the R.A.A. dance — Royal August Antics, that is to say 
 Could you not more truthfully translate this R.A.A. 
 
SHUT IN, BUT ALMOST OUT 225 
 
 " Eeductio ad ahsxirdum" performance? Have you 
 caught the picture ? An old man trying to dance with a 
 thirty-yards-long loin-cloth artistically bunched out in 
 flounces round him, and worn just as the planet Saturn 
 wears his rings. 
 
 Nevertheless, in spite of all these fireworks and army 
 antics, you can see at a glance that this mass of men 
 without drill is only a poor decentralised mob run on the 
 go-as-you-please idea. The only apology you can make 
 for it is when you rub up your history a bit, and remember 
 that this feudal system of every sub-chief collecting the 
 men of his district and mobilising around the king is the 
 only thing the world knew, from the days of Moses up to 
 the time when Cromwell raised the first standing army. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 Black Suffragettes 
 
"Shrine of the Mighty! can it be 
 That this is all remains of thee ? " 
 
 "I have seen the wicked in great power, and 
 spreading himself Hke a green bay tree. Yet he 
 passed away, and, lo, he was not ; yea, I sought him, 
 but he could not be found." Psalm xxxvii. 35, 36, 
 
 " I am the green bay tree [Chitavatava] who first 
 
 sprouted in Sanga land." The Emperor Mushidi. 
 
 "And so they've voted the Devil out, 
 And of course the Devil's gone ; 
 But simple people would like to know, 
 Who carries his business on?" 
 
 MB 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 Black Suffragettes 
 
 W 
 
 'HEREIN it is clearly and con- 
 sistently demonstrated that even 
 a worm will turn. 
 
 (lOth July.) 
 'ORE executions of women, which means more 
 putrefying skulls and clouds of blue-bottle flies. 
 Skulls heaped on long rustic tables, skulls hanging 
 up on trees like hat-pegs, skulls with yawning mouths that 
 would not shut even in death. This Bluebeard business, 
 remember, means hard detective work, and the Emperor 
 spends sleepless nights raiding his own harems. Five 
 hundred (and a fraction) wives and not a padlock in the 
 land. It is on this sorry score blood runs in torrents, 
 for the paramours are legion, and often the true, because 
 prior, husbands of the stolen women. Mushidi knows all 
 this and more, knows he must keep running to the red, 
 reckless expedient of killing even on suspicion. For owing 
 to the ramifications of this polygamic mob of wives and 
 concubines, it is now easily evident that even Mushidi has 
 outwitted Mushidi. It has become his nightmare this, 
 for how is he to order his house in the severe sense 
 
 229 
 
230 THINKING BLACK 
 
 demanded by his status ? Are not his most trusty 
 Kalamas all equally suspect ? A Kalama is a chamber- 
 lain, but the very watchmen are the thieves, and the 
 Arabs are right when they say of these traitors, that 
 Mushidi had given " the cat the duty of keeping the key 
 of the pigeon-house " ! Exasperated as he is, it is just 
 here Bluebeard yawns and resigns all pretensions to deal- 
 ing judicially and fairly with his victims. Baulked in 
 a systematic scheme of spying, he has resorted to 
 "dreaming" his victim, ignoring the fact that even in 
 upside-down Africa dreams go by the contrary. Did he 
 not himself tell me the other day that having dreamed a 
 banquet, there must be a famine ? Poor Mushidi ! This 
 endless round of harem marriages is a bad, black business 
 for the country. Killing his wronged victim as he does, 
 he only comes off second best. For at least the doomed 
 slave has relief from his bondsman's groan in a sharp, 
 short death, but how can Mushidi escape the thraldom of his 
 own heart ? He has brute power enough to kill them in 
 heaps, but how much more horrible if Mushidi had the 
 power to compel them to live. From what I am learning 
 these days, seemingly the true definition of " tyrant" is a 
 man who finds his happiness in the unhappiness of others. 
 Little does the merciless old brute guess that judgment 
 has a rod in pickle for himself even now. He forgets that 
 to refuse to forgive is to cut down the bridge you yourself 
 must one day cross. His is the old thick-headed idea 
 that it is possible by digging far enough into the human 
 body with a spear to arrive at the real living man. But 
 
BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 231 
 
 even now the reflex revenge is speeding on its way to keep 
 the sure law that a tyrant is best embalmed in his own 
 blood. Here he is day by day despising our glorious 
 Gospel ; flattery, sickly flattery, is his mode of attempting 
 to spike our Gospel guns, and the glib tongue reveals a 
 hard old heart seared to it all. Preach on Love with a 
 capital letter, and by a wriggle he is out of the whole 
 subject in a moment — what does he, a polygamist, want 
 with the Love that passeth the love of women ? King or 
 slave, this glibness of tongue is Africa's endless horror. 
 Wherever you move the wise old saw perfectly expresses 
 our longing : Rather a negro heart without words, than 
 negro words without heart. 
 
 (Later.) 
 Now let me try to tackle in cold ink this horror of 
 polygamy — a subject, alas, almost certain to incur the 
 vitiating touch of coarseness. We have already seen 
 all the Mushidi institutions built on the bedrock of 
 Nature's precedents among the animals. (Precedent, not 
 principle, remember, is the only law in Africa.) Here, 
 then, in his colossal system of polygamy, you see 
 only another instance of the Bantu curriculum in the 
 University of the Beasts. A sociologist far away in 
 England can work up a whole bookcase of plausible 
 data on such an ancient subject, toying with his pet-doll 
 theory before the study fire. But here, on the edge of 
 Lufira Valley, you frankly see polygamy cradled amongst 
 the zebras and antelopes. Thence, anon (and quite as 
 frankly), you see the same polygamy invade the native 
 
232 THINKING BLACK 
 
 town from the plains. Who, for instance, does this 
 Bluebeard chief pretend to be, if not " the bull of the 
 herd " ? Again and again I hear beast-precedents quoted 
 in support of native customs, and all in the gruesome 
 formula : "So hath the Lord commanded us." Thus 
 this old Emperor with his mob of five hundred wives is 
 merely an attempt to live a la the Lufira quadrupeds. At 
 Munema I heard some Court gossip about an exceptional 
 Amazon who was numbered among these "hen-cooped" 
 wives. This woman — no slattern she ! — dared to preach 
 in a dark, hinting way the far-off dream of women's 
 rights, but King Bluebeard got wind of it through her 
 rival. With regrettable vulgarity, Mushidi called the 
 propagandist "a goat" for such silly speech. "Yea, my 
 lord," Mrs. Amazon pouted, " even the goats are a 
 model marriage, for the female has as good a pair of 
 horns as the Billy." 
 
 * # # 
 
 Have just had a long talk with our Mrs. Amazon, 
 and a strange story this Shila woman tells. A real 
 Suffragette, she is the member of a woman's secret 
 society that boasts of big deeds in days gone by. 
 Listen to this eye-opening history of such an incredible 
 woman's movement in Far Central Africa. 
 
 " Why is it," she asks, " that the foreign Lunda tribe 
 is now in the ascendant around Lake Mweru ? " Well, 
 a family dynastic brawl did it all, and a woman (again !) 
 "was in the transgression." Nkuva, the lord paramount, 
 was her own brother, but did he not dare to slay and 
 
> 1 y T f 
 
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 \ 
 
 \. 
 
 .^. 
 
 
 •^i^ 
 
 \ 
 
 / 
 
 %:n 
 
 ONE OF MUSHIDI'S 500 WIVES. 
 
BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 233 
 
 skiu her son, liis nephew, to make a kingly carpet of 
 the human cuticle ? To have her son thus so literally 
 " trampled upon " in both life and death was too 
 exasperating for the Princess, and in hot revenge she 
 called in the foreign Lunda tribe from the Far West. 
 This, then, is the real beginning of the famous Kazembe 
 rule in the Luapula Valley, and by a woman's invitation, 
 and not conquest, are they there. So typical is it all, 
 that when you try to unravel the tangled tale of any 
 African tribe's history, a few exploring remarks reveal 
 that some silly daughter of Eve robbed them of their 
 Eden — yes, box the African compass, and one key will 
 unlock all the dynastic locks : Cherchez la feiivnie. That 
 Princess, though, had to pay a big bill for this the sweet- 
 ness and terror of her revenge. For when the avenging 
 Lunda arrived from the West, the leader ominously 
 struck his spear into a tall sycamore tree, thus arrogating 
 to himself dominion over all these Luapula lands. In 
 other words, having entered by the Western doorway, 
 he forthwith locked the door, putting the imaginary key 
 in his imaginary pocket. Thus, even thus, were the 
 Shila folk driven forth from their Eden, just as, not 
 John Milton, but a woman, was the real authoress of 
 Pai'adise Lost. But watch the Suffragette sequel. 
 
 Far from degrading the cause of woman in the Far 
 Interior, this very feminine treachery stiffened the back 
 of her sex, and really conduced to the amelioration of 
 her lot as the degraded chattel of her black partner. 
 
 This, in fact, is the true genesis of that "Zenobia" class 
 '5 
 
234 THINKING BLACK 
 
 of women chiefs to be found in the land. To this day 
 the common ruse of a crushed wife is to make a 
 gracefully turned allusion to that revolutionary deed of 
 a neo-ress Ions aoro, the covert threat in her hint being 
 that what woman has done, woman can and will do. 
 And the husband brute has the sense to wince truculently 
 at the very memory of that woman's treachery long ago, 
 his sheepish, discomfited look revealing that the woman 
 has struck home. Certes, there is nothing can move 
 a drowsy old African like a jag from past history. 
 Having no literature, the African as a consequence 
 clings tenaciously to the past precedents of his race, 
 the antiquity of a fact being its sanctity. 
 
 But there is more to follow. Far more interesting 
 than this ascent of woman to the status of a Zenobia 
 queenship is her daring to combine, and form this great 
 secret society of theirs into which no man dare penetrate. 
 All pivoted on that one woman's wrong long ago when her 
 son was skinned to make a human carpet. These black 
 women let their unfettered fancies roam over the vast 
 sphere of their sex's wrongs, and this black Club of theirs 
 is the sacred confessional. Often a husband goes foodless 
 if Mrs. Amazon is attending a Club meeting, and oftener 
 the happy and harmless wife becomes, after initiation, 
 " a new woman " indeed. 
 
 " Budindu" is the name of this female freemasonry, 
 and many a feminine titter can he overheard at the expense 
 of the men. The rites of initiation are nameless, but the 
 general idea is that of a Benefit Society, whose supreme 
 
BLACK SUFFIIAGETTES 235 
 
 function is to scrutinise the cause of death of any of its 
 members. As African men often play their women the 
 scurviest of tricks, it is absolutely necessary that these 
 women combine in some sort to beat the tom-tom of their 
 sex. This secret society it was that decreed a " Married 
 Women's Property Act" long before the belated English 
 Act of 1883, and on the death of one of their guild they 
 pounce down on her moveable estate " to the uttermost 
 farthing." Some of these female Club decisions have 
 indeed assumed portentous proportions in the high poli- 
 tics of Central Africa, a notorious instance being the 
 cedinof of the whole north shore of Lake Mweru to satiate 
 a Budindu Club claim. For they fastened on the Lake 
 King with the almost trifling plea that one of their princess 
 (Inamfumu) members of the guild had been delivered of a 
 still-born child, and for this " crime " the Kins; of all Mweru 
 (her husband) was forced to pay a large slice of territory. 
 Beginnino; at the Muntemune River on the north-west 
 corner of the Lake, and sweeping right round the map 
 as far as Kalembwe's on the east, this poor henpecked King 
 solemnly expropriated himself of all that land to appease 
 the "lioness robbed of her whelp," i.e. the princess who 
 bore him the still-born child. This, in fact, was the 
 biggest legal fish the Club ever fried, and these Suffragette 
 Lake ladies clothe themselves with impressiveness as they 
 tell the twice-told tale of this, the Waterloo of their Club. 
 Yet, so binding and final was this territorial decision 
 that to this day, if an elephant dies in the waters of the 
 Muntemune with its head pointing to the north bank, 
 
236 THINKING BLACK 
 
 then the ivory is claimed by Mpweto at the Lnalaba 
 
 crossing. 
 
 [Later.) 
 As farther West, so too here in the Interior, there is 
 the usual African massacre of the innocents ; "dentition 
 deaths " these are called. Read this Luban episode. 
 Here is a bonnie baby doomed to die because its little 
 milk teeth "sprouted" on the wrong — i.e. the upper — 
 gum first. Far from being the usual little black bundle 
 of screams, behold, a dear little, queer little morsel who 
 must be murdered. This dental abnormity is the tribal 
 terror, for every negro must go the way of his blood, must 
 wear the blinkers, so to say, must follow his father's lead. 
 Here, then, is a baby who dares so early to break normal 
 precedent in the fashion of teeth, and the cherub must die 
 as a monster. No Rachel ever weeps for such a child, 
 and when the mother detects the first tooth on the wrons 
 gum she flees from the innocent, frozen with fright. For 
 does not the proverb say that the babe that breaks the 
 normal law of dentition must be broken ? Lutala is the 
 child's name, and the idea is that there is a fiend taking 
 ambush inside such an abnormal baby, therefore death is 
 the doom. For if a demon be inside baby, and baby be 
 inside the town stockade, then woe to that town, and woe 
 to that baby. The chief Nkuva is a case in point. He 
 was the father of three bouncing boys all of whom he 
 murdered in succession, the appearance of the upper teeth 
 doing it all. When dentition drew near the poor mother 
 spent three agonising days in suspense, each baby being 
 
BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 237 
 
 spurned like a serpent when he revealed his terrible upper 
 teeth first. But No. 3 settled matters, and the chief 
 having spurned his babies, finally spurned their mother as 
 the latent cause of it all. Instead, however, of this dis- 
 graceful divorce dislocating her whole life as in England, 
 she married a negro friend of mine ; their first baby had 
 normal dentition, and now the lady flourishes this fact 
 in the face of her ex-spouse with withering scorn. The 
 Kingdom of God, however, is not for goody-goodies, and 
 this very murderer of babies broke with it all and yielded 
 to the Christ Who loved little ones. " Suffer the little 
 children to come unto Me," said He — yea, and let their 
 murderers come also. Was not Christ's first offer of 
 pardon to His own murderers ? 
 
 But in Africa it never rains but it pours, and here, 
 while the ink is still wet, my boy Mirambo comes 
 fluttering in with devastating tidings. Just back home 
 from the South, he finds his baby-boy has disappeared. 
 Query, Where is baby ? Then ekes out the tale of another 
 "dentition death," this story being quite a speciality, for 
 baby was so hearty that he had sprouted both an upper 
 and a lower tooth at the same time. What must be done ? 
 A fisherman took baby away out into mid-Lake, and baby 
 even laughed with glee as the bad man tied a rope round 
 his waist and on that rope a stone. Baby even crowed 
 when the fisherman took him up in his arms, but splash 
 went bonnie baby into blue Mweru. And all because 
 he was a neutral and had teeth on both gums on the 
 same day ! 
 
238 THINKING BLACK 
 
 A tremendous business this teetliing; institution. 
 Farther North, a Chief with quite a dandified air 
 produced a royal babe who had passed the curious 
 ceremony of " the justification of the child." He certified 
 the youngster as his very own, the scion of a Royal 
 House, with the real Kalamata nose as flat as a button and 
 the real Kalamata pugnacious bawl. Or to speak in the 
 language of printers and publishers, an exact edition in 
 duodecimo of the larger work in folio, both bound in best 
 brown leather. Baby was beplastered with white chalk, 
 and feeling so uncomfortable that he bawled as loudly as 
 though he were twins. For to-day his delighted mother 
 could scarcely believe her eyes when she beheld her ofi"- 
 spring had really sprouted a tooth normally — and bang ! 
 went an old flintlock to herald the great news. A long 
 swing of the pendulum this, for up to this point the 
 child has been looked at askance, and reckoned only a 
 mere "/it" — won't somebody invent anew pronoun? — a 
 mere mushroom pretender to babyhood, your toothless 
 child being a nonentity. Bight on from birth, the 
 Spartan mother has made him rough it, all injudicious 
 coddling being considered detrimental. No rag of calico 
 is bare baby allowed to wear, even out in the cold nig] it 
 air, the elastic functions of the body thus getting a chance 
 to be exercised. Malnutrition they do object to, however, 
 and the cherub is nearly choked by the purely mechanical 
 manner a coarse porridge is rammed down his little throat. 
 The youngster's mouth is opened so wide that it mono- 
 polises nearly five-sixths of his face, and through this huge 
 
BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 239 
 
 aperture the porridge is pushed home, baby the while 
 nearly kicking his little feet oft' as the alarming alterna- 
 tive to howling. This ventral distension is finally so 
 alarming that they must leave off on the plea of incapacity, 
 the trouble being not too much porridge but too little 
 baby-boy. Yet all this is mere dessert, for, to the 
 cannibal, nothing can compensate for "God's own sacred 
 way of giving milk " — his mother's breast. Of course, 
 they bathe the rogue, but the bath is not such an affair of 
 immense and intricate pomp as in petted England : with 
 cold water in the cold air they tone up the small black 
 body to play the Luban tune. 
 
 Now, however, that the little one has toed the tribal 
 line and produced this terrible tooth, the father feels as 
 tall as the Eiffel Tower, and he declares his son "justified." 
 The technical term for this justification is the old Bible 
 one, " I will give him the white stone," and this Lupemba 
 is the same word for the squaring of any outstanding 
 account — not a bad idea of justification for a man-eater. 
 The ridiculous Mama now runs with the tide and insists 
 that the tooth is a prize sample : in fact, she so hugs 
 Master Tom Thumb that when I last saw him he was in 
 a state of suspended animation. This, then, is the sort of 
 christening of a young cannibal, the tribal test being one 
 of tuskers. Yet they sell their bonnie bairns for a mere 
 song, that father with cold glittering eyes coveting calico 
 in exchange for his own fiesh and blood — fancy a being 
 wearing a warm human skin bartering his own blood 
 and bone ! You can cudgel your brains for a reason, 
 
240 THINKING BLACK 
 
 but will only find it after you have settled that other 
 poser of why he can eat both human beef and bone. 
 The selling is surely minor in comparison. 
 
 (10th August.) 
 But what about preaching all this time ? Day by day, 
 at his lordly banquet of local politics one is itching to get 
 in a word of wisdom edgeways. True, our evangel is the 
 very last thing Rex wants, but as even roast beef however 
 well cooked makes bad dessert, I proposed that he should 
 give me an opening for my creature-humbling, Christ- 
 exalting Gospel. To delay to do right is to decide to do 
 wrong — then why delay ? Told him that even a pagan 
 like Aristotle rounded off his great book De Mundo by 
 saying that it would be impious not to mention the 
 Creator thereof. This sharp shunting on to another line 
 he thought a bit too intrusive, and was annoyed that I did 
 not take his petty polemics much more seriously. Why 
 not keep to the easy-souled paths of diplomatic agreement ? 
 What mad moonshine was this our persistently pointing 
 up to God's sky and calling Him true King of Katanga ? 
 Was not he, the black one. Lord of the land, and when 
 every cock in the land crowed did it not crow " Mushidi " ? 
 Every man in the country, too, did he not make the pre- 
 scribed prostrations and call him " Lord God " ? He 
 thinks we are fools for disdaining his negro politics, pretty 
 much, I suppose, as in Paul's day the Greek's meaning for 
 the word " idiot " was " a person who refused to meddle 
 in politics." Little he knows that to the very end of the 
 
BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 241 
 
 age God represents its rulers as " wild beasts," the one 
 immediately preceding the coming of the " King of kings " 
 being the biggest beast of all — The Beast. 
 
 Only once can I recall his ever sitting out a formal 
 meeting. The Chief seemed superbly indifferent during 
 the whole sermon on "Blind Bartimceus," nevertheless he 
 had his innings after me, preaching a counter gospel for 
 the Devil. 
 
 "We are blind, are we? Well, then, man of God, 
 so be it, and please note (l) that a blind man only know^s 
 what he touches with his fingers: i.e., let us grip your 
 Gospel in our fists, and then we will believe it. 
 
 " (2) Remember, also, that a blind man must be careful 
 of what he eats : i.e., give us time to consider your Gospel 
 for a century or two. 
 
 " Finally, no blind man ever forgot the road to his 
 mouth : i.e., if we find this Gospel of yours to be beneficial, 
 then we will take it without pressure." Yet people think 
 of these folks as dull-witted, ox-eyed blacks. Only 
 another instance of the old truth that " not many wise, 
 not many noble," care a straw for salvation. The smallest 
 streams hold the biggest trout, and our happiest times are, 
 not with the Chief, but with outcasts in Sychar ministry. 
 Depend upon it, the publicans and harlots will go into the 
 banquet of Life before King Hoity-toity. Ah, if sin were 
 only better known, Christ would be held in higher esteem. 
 # # # • 
 
 But do not imagine that our Mushidi will have nothing 
 to do with religion. Did we but encouraoje him in the 
 
242 THINKING BLACK 
 
 idea, this is the mad monarch who would build a cathedral 
 as high as the pyramids, cementing every brick with 
 blood. Yes, 
 
 " a huge temple, decked by Herod's pride. 
 Who fain would bribe a God he ne'er believed." 
 
 Anything colossal appeals to his small mind, and indeed 
 the proper noun "God" is in daily use for surpassing 
 bulk or greatness. He would dearly love to send out a 
 " search warrant " for a congregation, driving in hundreds 
 to this Devil's fold by sjambok. He, too, would negotiate 
 baptisms of the " King Menelik " order, " baptism by 
 capture" as it is called. Do you know that hundreds 
 of Africans in the North are pounced down on by royal 
 command, and en masse driven like silly sheep into the 
 river? There they are divided into bands, the Wolda 
 Gabriel and Wolda Jesus, and thus they sin the bad old 
 sin of making Jesus Christ King by force. Truly the 
 Kingdom of Heaven suflfereth violence. Was it not the 
 Church's worst day when it was able to shout " Victory ! " 
 on a successor of the Caesars holding the stirrup for a 
 Christian bishop to mount his horse ? But all this 
 " Defender of the Faith " role is denied him : it would 
 be about as appropriate to allow Mushidi to " run the 
 Mission " as it is to see Bishops in the House of Lords 
 or a lady in a smoking compartment. Yet he has his 
 affectations of morality. Oh yes ! This is the old show- 
 man who poses as an angel on a mud-heap. By way of 
 wrapping the robe of the Pharisee round about him he 
 
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BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 243 
 
 daily preaches against tobacco as either simff or smoke. 
 Pipes of wood or pipes of gourd are all taboo, and the old 
 definition of this vain thing pleases him hugely : "A tube 
 with fire at one end of it, and a fool at the other." Only 
 by stealth can a smoker puff his cloud, and no snufi" is 
 allowed under severe penalty. One poor fellow who forgot 
 himself into the indiscretion of a pinch of snuff" in the 
 royal presence was maimed for life. The punishment 
 farther North for this nasal inhalation is the cuttinof off 
 of the lips. Mushidi's axiomatic definition of tobacco is 
 " death," and he gets leverage for this idea in the local 
 etymology of the word Fwaka = tohacco, i.e. the death- 
 dealer. Is this the true genesis of the old Raleigh story 
 of his servant suspecting he was "on fire at the mouth" 
 and pouring cold water on the pioneer smoker ? 
 * # * 
 
 Mushidi, I find, is really an Emperor, because all the 
 aboriginal kings for hundreds of miles stream in and do 
 fealty. No fussy genuflexion this, but the simple and 
 solitary shout "Conqueror!" (Kashinde), with one 
 clap of the hands. If you quiz one of these chiefs as to 
 his rights of kingship, at first he shivers at the im- 
 pertinence of the thing. Pushing investigations, however, 
 you find that very rarely has he real title-deeds, and not 
 even the red spear of Rob Roy, to prove his rights. The 
 fact is, many of these lesser chiefs have won territory in 
 lawsuits ; not hard muscles but hard mouths doing it all. 
 Take some data. Lokona has ancestral riirhts to his 
 territory, because the first of his dynasty ate a dog at a 
 
244 THINKING BLACK 
 
 neighbouring kings court. Behold that first Lokoua 
 forced to eat his first dog, yet even as he digests this 
 new sort of canine mutton he meditates a lawsuit, the 
 plea running : " Why should I, a salt-of-the-earth Sera 
 man, be so insulted in being invited to break taboo by 
 eating the dog of a barbarian ? " So to prove great 
 moral wrong inflicted by such gastronomical exertions 
 over an unclean pug, this founder of a dynasty turned 
 sick as a Bay of Biscay voyager, the end of that victorious 
 vomit being the ceding of large tracts of territory, flowing 
 streams, and a good larder of antelopes in the plains. 
 Quite a brisk bit of business that "beware of the dog" 
 lawsuit, for to this day, far from railway train and 
 teeming city, a Lokona still reigns in the sylvan quiet 
 of his forest. Yea, if ever in the far future one of the 
 dynasty boasts of note-paper and a coat of arms, it is 
 conceivable that he will have worked in somewhere a 
 victorious dog in the family crest. 
 
 The adjacent fisher chief Muvanga, who owns the 
 Bethsaida of Lake Mweru, has likewise lawsuit title- 
 deeds to his bit of foreshore. What was the forensic fight 
 about ? For many a year these Muvanga chiefs were 
 poor highlanders forced to till the sour soil of the 
 plateau, getting only a glance of blue Mweru through 
 the trees. Down below, the fisher-folk had struck it 
 strong in an endless harvest of fish, being thus fat and 
 filthy in obverse ratio to the leanness and cleanness of 
 the hill-men. With the acumen of an old campaigner, 
 however, the chief on the hill knew that his day was 
 

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 IT'S NOT THE HANDS THAT STEAL, 
 BUT THE HEART. 
 
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BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 245 
 
 drawiug near — a mere chance ultimately changing the 
 colour of the map — country, I mean, for the negro knows 
 nothing but the real map of nature drawn to the scale of 
 eight furlongs to one mile. Well, the happy day came when 
 one of the hill-men, prowling down in the plains, spied a 
 crowd of Lake dwellers huzzahing over some find they 
 had made — iron-ore it turned out to be. But shall we 
 not rather call this an unhappy find, for did they not 
 seize the wandering highlander and slay him as a sacrifice 
 on the opening of the mine? Remember, in Africa, 
 without the shedding of blood there is no — no anything, so 
 how could they dare exploit this new mine without the 
 traditional human sacrifice ? Indeed, these nude capitalists 
 of Ion 2: aero are rather reminiscent of modern Steel Trusts 
 in the fact that they believed strongly in sacrifice, but 
 only to the extent of making some scapegoat outsider the 
 sufierer. So they slew this man and sprinkled his blood 
 down the open mine, "cleansing by blood" the mineral 
 deposit. And thus it was the clock of destiny struck for 
 those hungry hill-men, their vengeance not taking the 
 form of a shrill warcry but rather a long nagging 
 lawsuit. For days and months they doggedly pushed 
 their claim for compensation, the fisher chief Nongwe 
 temporising like a shrewd old lawyer. A tangled tale 
 that lawsuit, a tale of loops and ties, loose threads 
 and entanglements, inconsistencies and nebulous nothings. 
 But fine words even in Africa butter no parsnips, and 
 finally the highlander snatched a legal victory — verdict : 
 That the said Muvanga receive a slice of foreshore for dry 
 
246 THINKING BLACK 
 
 season corn and a share in the fisheries of Lake Mweru. 
 Thus the meekest of all the Muvano^as climbed to the 
 twin-summits of his ancestral ambitions, and red blood 
 did it all. Then it is the nude negro makes you rub up 
 your English etymology, for do not " blood," " bloom," 
 and " blossom " all come from the same root ? And here, 
 in the mud-marshes of Africa, do not the tribesmen say, 
 "No blood, no blossom"? Quite an amusing side-light 
 all this on Mr. Stanley's boast that in founding the 
 Congo Free State he had made " treaties with four hundred 
 and fifty independent chiefs whose rights would have 
 been conceded by all to have been indisputable, since they 
 held their lands by undisturbed occupation by long ages 
 of succession by real divine gift." 
 
 But " 'tis always morning somewhere in the w^orld," 
 and our Lord Jesus Christ Himself has added a happy 
 postscript to this history — I mean, the conversion of this 
 aboriginal chief whose dynasty it was that shed the 
 sacrificial blood, ^ongwe is his name, and his prede- 
 cessor crossed over to Kilwa Island one night to rescue 
 a prisoner, but was murdered by the Arabs just as he was 
 putting out to sea for the return journey. This meant a 
 stampede back upon us at Luanza, leaving the lands of his 
 ancestors to elephants and game. But those Arab curses 
 again were merely a sort of upside-down benediction. 
 Certainly God made the wrath of Islam to praise Him, 
 one vivid, electrifying flash of faith saving Nongwe's soul 
 to eternity. Thus, l)y a long roundabout route, Christ 
 the Sacrifice redeemed this chief fi-om all the troubles 
 
BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 247 
 
 brought upon him by that first human sacrifice long ago 
 — by blood cometh sorrow, therefore by blood cometh joy. 
 Yea, I might almost say that all things in poor old Africa 
 are sprinkled by blood, and without the shedding of 
 blood there is no — no anything. Little did these old negro 
 miners guess how symbolic it all was, that spilling of 
 human blood to celebrate their find of minerals — a Trans- 
 vaal War, and many another wrangle, all so symbolised in 
 that shedding; of blood over ore. 
 
 {Later. ) 
 Hurrah ! here they come. With the breaking of the 
 south-west monsoon here come the royal rains at last — rains 
 that, at first blush, seem as the angels of God, converting 
 bare brown Africa into a paradise of green. Let a month 
 rush past, however, and you begin to take back all your 
 compliments, for this grass gets out of hand, becomes 
 erratic and unreliable. For the traveller, too, it is often 
 one long dismal succession of drip, drizzle, and drench ; 
 then, as the rank tangle shoots 12 feet high, the early 
 ducal-park aspect of the meadows is lost in a wild pro- 
 fusion of stubborn cane-grass and scrub. And thus, in a 
 flash, you see the real reason in so logically legislating 
 for Africa such a clean-cut system of half-and-half weather, 
 the summer seemingly as absurdly wet as the winter is 
 absurdly dry. For owing to the great rivers only being 
 so many mere canals with inadequate banks, the end of 
 the rains sees them leaping over into the plains where for 
 months they wallow in merciless marshes. (The truest 
 snapshot of all this was taken by Isaiah, the Prophet, 
 
248 THINKING BLACK 
 
 long before the days of " Kodaks," when he described 
 Africa as the continent " ivhose land the rivers have 
 spoiled.") The sleeping-sickness fly, malarial mosquito, 
 and endless etceteras are all cradled there in these 
 squelching bogs of despair. In plain English, these 
 marshes mean that this Africa of ours is really rotting for 
 four months yearly, and all to the tune of millions of 
 malarial mosquitoes humming their sweet tenor. 
 
 Then cometh climax. For sun, stink, and sickness get 
 so bad that the God Who sitteth o'er all waterfloods calls 
 an imperative halt to Nature in its mad career. And lo ! 
 from mid-April to mid-October, the land swings back, 
 like a pendulum, to the exciting extreme of a season 
 of sun, only sun with not a dream of a drop of rain. 
 Monotonous months though they seem, what is really 
 happening is that this scorching sun is most surely and 
 solidly drying up the awful fecundity of the marshes. 
 The meteorological objective, in fact, of all this is a 
 working out at that great "spring cleaning" of Africa 
 called "the smokes" : now it is our dark green land is a 
 weary expanse of sere yellow waste, even the murderous 
 marshes cracked solid and dry as a kiln. " The sickness 
 of the land," they call it, and now it is any irresponsible 
 nobody can, with one lighted firebrand, send broad Central 
 Africa up in a blaze. Then, too, it is this irresponsible 
 nobody is overruled by a responsible Somebody, who 
 uses this beneficent antiseptic Ijlaze to purge out of 
 His own Africa everything that doth offend, from sea 
 to sea. 
 
BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 249 
 
 (1st December.) 
 To-day I tumbled headlong down one of the pitfalls of 
 Court etiquette by daring to wear a pair of glasses. An 
 old Mutoni lectured me that on approaching such a King 
 of Timbuctoo a strong point of etiquette is to doflf, not 
 your hat but your spectacles, for such a man is called 
 " Mr. Four-eyes " and is a horror. So, in spite of any 
 little visual defect, you must climb down to the normal 
 use of two eyes, not four. Nor may you even screw a 
 monocle into your eye, for then your name is " Mr. One 
 Eye " (why not " Mr. Three " ?). The method in this 
 madness is a real peep into the dark chamber of the 
 negro brain, for he detests eye-glasses with a reason. 
 And thus it runs. In Africa you must not only set a 
 watch upon the door of your lips, but must also be 
 inscrutably careful as to your tell-tale face, for with the 
 wary eye of an experienced angler the African can easily 
 fish news out of the two deep liquid pools of your eye- 
 balls. To him eyes speak all languages under the sun, 
 yea, they talk better than tongues ; for if the eye says one 
 thing and the tongue another, then will he plump for the 
 verdict of the eye. Hence this antipathy to "Mr. Four- 
 eyes." To don these glasses before a chief is a traitor's 
 act, for are you not thereby putting yourself as far away 
 from his ferret eyes as you are bringing him nearer to 
 your own ? The insinuating logic of the thing is so 
 convincing that you frankly own up to having been un- 
 pardonably rude in wearing spectacles. What could be 
 
 more crushing than the ancient African rule, " Distrust a 
 i6 
 
250 THINKING BLACK 
 
 man that cannot look you in the face, and distrust a 
 woman who can " ? 
 
 Instead of a field-glass or eye-glass firing his fancy, 
 he will lecture you on your poor eyesight, and rather 
 ingeniously argues that our tallow candles and oil are the 
 cause of it all. God, says the negro, has made the human 
 eye on the recuperative system of a long dark night as 
 offset to the hard white glare of the blazing sun, and 
 every sunset God draws down the blinds of darkness. 
 That balmy night is life's surest because methodic eye- 
 salve. Thus it is that for centuries the negro has scored 
 in having no lucifer matches but the stars, no lamp but 
 the moon, his reward being that, matched against a white 
 man in the woods, the spoilt child of candles and lamps 
 can only see yards for the African's miles. Call this the 
 law of compensation or anything you like, but do not miss 
 the point that here is a compensation that really compen- 
 sates. The enforced darkness nurses the eye, thus pre- 
 serving the keen edge of vision. If I remember rightly, 
 did not Benjamin Franklin calculate that we could pay 
 off the national debt with the cost of candles and lamps 
 that would be saved if we went to bed at sunset and got 
 up at sunrise ? 
 
 Nor is this all. Our sense of hearing is weakened 
 likewise. For, seemingly, we Europeans cannot have our 
 omelette of civilisation without breaking quite a number 
 of eggs, and our handy box of matches and our candles are 
 merely two more broken eggs for the omelette. That is 
 to say, they are quickly killing out of us all the old savage 
 
BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 251 
 
 sense of quick hearing. True, we still talk about " cocking 
 our ears," but in the dark we stupidly scratch a match to 
 find out what made the noise, whereas the negro having 
 no matches must, in the dark, make his ears tell him all. 
 The drum of his ear is both match and candle, and in the 
 broad racial sense the negro verily has his reward. For 
 the hundreds of night sounds — rustlings, twitterings, 
 raspings, tinglings, and roarings — are all known to even 
 Africa's tot, the ears being called his " eyes of darkness." 
 
 But matches are a boon, notwithstanding, and there 
 often comes the painful pinch when you find yourself 
 benighted without a kindly lucifer match. In these 
 wilds the philanthropic beam of a farthing candle is too 
 high an aspiration, but, other things being equal, the 
 native can always produce light by rubbing his fire-stick. 
 Often your most urgent need is a match for a midnight 
 alarm. True, we have plenty of electric light, when the 
 Lord switches it on in the sky ; and many a good turn 
 it has done me. I was in a tight corner in the Sera 
 plains when a humble lucifer would have been the simple 
 solution. Black clouds had rolled up from the far 
 Kundelungu range, and the heavens rang with the loud 
 artillery of thunder. Then the lightning began to fork 
 and flash. Driven into a deserted hamlet before the 
 advancing deluge, a random choice of a hut was made — 
 too random, alas ! for the thing was many sizes too small 
 for one. Only just in the nick of time, for growl went 
 the bursting thunder, and the torrential downpour was 
 upon us. Double-d up there in a leaky outhouse with an 
 
252 THINKING BLACK 
 
 odd flash of lightning for your only candle — oh for one 
 of Messrs. Bryant & May's best ! (Why is it that the 
 African says, "Think snake, sight snake'"?) A sudden 
 
 thought came. What if . Just then, hiss, went the 
 
 notorious noise of an unseen "'mamba" from a corner of 
 the dark den, and it's oh, indeed, for a kindly match now, 
 just now. My heart seemed to stop for repairs. As 
 though this longing for a lucifer had actually pressed the 
 invisible button of an electric-light current, flash ! came 
 another single steel-blue streak of lightning, and there, 
 plain as a pikestaff, a long green snake showed in the 
 flash of fire. Atrociously, maddeningly, for one flashing 
 moment, I sighted my co-occupant of the den, then, back 
 both man and snake were hurled into the blackness of 
 that pestiferous gloom. Oh for a kindly lucifer ! thought 
 I. For who does not know that a snake never really 
 attacks a man, only bites out of fear, and only because 
 you have stumbled over him in error. Need I say that, 
 as that mamba blocked the doorway, I had to tear down 
 the grass wall for escape, preferring my sheets of rain 
 to a snake under the other sheets. The blackness makes 
 you a baby in helplessness, therefore a baby's fancies and 
 fears flood the brain. Small wonder the negro has such 
 a sharp sense of hearing, the slightest sound being tell- 
 tale : " the sharpers," he calls the ears, and surely the 
 reason is found just here in his negro life, lacking utterly 
 the adjunct of match or candle. For if we played-out 
 Europeans hear a noise, then straightway must we blunt 
 the edge of our sharp ears by striking a light to decide 
 
BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 253 
 
 the cause. Whereas the African's ears are his " darkness- 
 eyes," and they must play the part of both match and 
 candle. This auricular sharpness is also called " spiked 
 ears," and seemingly our so-called spike of acute hearing 
 has become blunt, because it thus depends on sight to 
 solve the problems of sound. This, he says, is the 
 reason why God, Who divided the twenty-four hours into 
 darkness and light, also divided man into ears and eyes, 
 the correlatives with twelve hours apiece. The Faraday 
 who made the world ring with his Chemical History of 
 a Candle would most surely have enjoyed this negro's 
 lecture on " The Philosophy of a Candle." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 Thus Far and no Farther 
 
"When they were but few men in number; yea, 
 very few, and strangers in it. When they went from 
 one nation to another . . . He suffered no man to 
 do them wrong; yea, He reproved kings for their 
 sakes, saying, Touch not Mine anointed, and do My 
 prophets no harm." Psalm cv. 12-15. 
 
 "Beneath the cross of Jesus 
 
 I fain would take my stand— 
 The shadow of a mighty rock 
 
 Within a weary land: 
 A home within the wilderness, 
 
 A rest upon the way, 
 From the burning of the noontide heat 
 
 And the burden of the day." 
 
 -130 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Thus Far and no Farther 
 
 Tjy^ HEREIN the reader painfully 
 learns that a tyrant is only a slave 
 turned inside out. 
 
 (Ind December.) 
 
 THE King disdained my salute this morning ; turned 
 his back on me and muttered murder. I warrant 
 you, this Mushidi in the sulks is quite a dangerous 
 item in our programme. Then it is his crafty look reveals 
 potential blood, your blood and nothing short of it. " White 
 men ? " said King Cut-Throat the other ominous day with 
 disdain : " Oh, out East near Unyanyembe we killed 
 several." No thought pursues me so persistently as this : 
 nag, naggingly does it try to gain admittance into the soul, 
 the old David-in-the-dumps whine : "I shall one day perish 
 by the hand of Saul." Those murdered whites he boasts 
 of were, of course, poor Carter and Cadenhead — a touching 
 tale that, if all were known. Carter, an Englishman of 
 great ability and British Consul at Bagdad, one day burst 
 on astonished Central Africa with four Indian elephants. 
 The tale of his triumphant entry is a thing still told with 
 bated breath far into the heart of Africa. Livingstone 
 
 867 
 
258 THINKING BLACK 
 
 and Stanley are as nobodies compared with this " Lord of 
 Tuskers" who made the Rugarugas marvel at the sub- 
 jugation of such monsters. On the 20th of October, 
 behold I the triumphal entry of these four white men 
 riding their pilot elephant, the natives all amaze and 
 wondering whether they are mad or dreaming. Never 
 was advance guard of travelling circus acclaimed by 
 English rustics as on the great day when these swarming 
 negroes saw such a passing strange prodigy — a whole 
 tribe struck all of a heap and stupefied ! Were not 
 elephants the local terror and did they not kill many a 
 native ? Yet it is one of the ironies of contemporary 
 history, that there, stuck high on that elephant's back, 
 you have four white men who symbolise the coming 
 struggle for supremacy — two Belgians and two English- 
 men ! A prophecy of history you can certainly call it, 
 for who is the second Englishman if not the poor ill-fated 
 Stokes ? There they are, rubbing shoulders on the back 
 of an elephant. Carter and Stokes (English) with Popelin 
 and Van den Huvel (Belgians). Who would have dared 
 the thought that one day a Belgian would hang that 
 same Stokes on a forest tree in the wilds of Africa ? 
 With pleasing ignorance and charming stupidity, the 
 negroes never dared to dream that those four whites were 
 not one in nationality and fraternity, and had they 
 guessed the coming rivalry their joy would have known 
 no bounds. But long before Stokes died at the hands of 
 a Belgian, Carter and Cadenhead fell unwept victims to 
 the Rugarugas. Hurrali ! was the shout of these bandits 
 
THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER 259 
 
 on the 20th of October, and the following 25th of June 
 saw the very same negroes shrieking death. Yet Carter 
 in his death is even more famous than the Carter who 
 petrified Central Africa with his marvellous Indian 
 elephants. Attacked at Pimbwe on the 23rd June, 
 Cadenhead fell dead to the first bullet. Seeing one white 
 man dead, their 150 Zanzibaris fled, leaving Carter alone 
 to face the murderers — no, not wholly abandoned, for his 
 faithful mahouts and servant Mahomed — honour the 
 brave ! — stuck to their master. Far into the marshes of 
 Africa they still tell the tale of that brave British Consul 
 who sold his life so dearly, and even the Belgians call it 
 " une scene terrible, un combat digne des anciens heros." 
 Seventeen times his Winchester speaks, and seventeen men 
 lie dead. But this is not all. The carbine cartridges are 
 now finished, but with a defiance born of desperation he 
 falls back on his revolver, the circle of fire narrowing in 
 on him — a pack of howling wild beasts. Of course, they 
 too could shoot, and indeed, quite early in the fight, a 
 ballet had pinned poor Carter to the ground, the warning 
 this, that escape is now impossible. Seeing death ahead, 
 he coolly and carefully pulled out his watch, wrote a 
 farewell note, and beo^ged Mahomed to make off" with his 
 papers to Karema. Then, after making good practice with 
 his revolver for some time, " death and he lay down to- 
 gether," as the murderers say. Nor do they blush to tell me 
 how they mutilated the poor body with revolting cruelty. 
 So there you have the meaning of Mushidi's dark hint 
 to us : " Whites ? Oh, we killed several." 
 
260 THINKING BLACK 
 
 (Later.) 
 I thoiiglit I knew my Mushidi fairly intimately, but 
 to-day he quite nonplussed me by spitting in my face. 
 In a flash, I thought that here was a chance to share in 
 the sufferings of Christ : did they not spit in That Face 
 from Which one day the heavens and the earth shall 
 flee away ? But a tardy explanation of this foolery 
 was so suave and conciliating that I soon saw that I 
 had lost martyrdom. That spit was not a mere 
 expectoration but a compliment ; not a spit, in fact, but a 
 spout, for his mouth was full of beer, not holy water but 
 holy beer. Well, it seems that I had caught him in the 
 spirit of worship which in Africa also means the worship 
 of spirits by the drinking of beer. This worshipping 
 (Kupara) literally means a spitting or spouting, and when 
 they have spouted consecrated beer down into the ground, 
 they then start and link up the living and the dead by 
 spouting beer all around the place. This arrangement 
 harmonises exactly with the negro's ideas of fellowship in 
 dirty doings, and an Englishman would need to wear a 
 waterproof and an umbrella at such a function. It really 
 rains beer. Moreover, this curious custom of worshipping 
 the spirits with a drink called " spirits " is very subtle, the 
 hint seeming to be in the fact that a fainting, half-dead 
 man can be vivified by such a drink. But the river of 
 time is indeed brackish with the salt of human tears, and 
 here is Mushidi crouching to the spirits and pleading their 
 aid at the very moment when he is surrounded by the 
 accusing bleached skulls of his victims. Yet, " nobody 
 
THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER ^61 
 
 really dies " is the negro saying, so to him that white 
 
 skull is merely the last surviving wind-swept room of a 
 
 wrecked tenement. Now only a warrior's punch-bowl, the 
 
 very skull that 
 
 " was once ambition's airy hall, 
 The dome of thought, the palace of the soul." 
 
 Nevertheless, if you want to guess even faintly at the 
 curious convolutions of the black brain, you must seize 
 upon this great system of spirit-worship, which is one and 
 indivisible across Africa. The whole theory is merely the 
 solemn result of the negro as a race looking steadfastly 
 into the continents of death and eternity. What is this 
 fiction but a farrago of sense and nonsense ? The ardent 
 spirits of the living and the dead linked with these ardent 
 spirits — of beer. Worshipping by fits and starts and 
 sometimes only once per annum, the negro can only 
 cordially dispense with worship after he has dispensed 
 cordials. Do not they accuse us of the same thing when 
 we place wine on the Lord's Table ? 
 
 * * * 
 
 But there is more in it than mere tipple — tragedy, call 
 it. Watch this African's definition of spirit-worship, a 
 sorry enough solution of the problem. Here it is. Shut 
 up into one sentence the kernel idea is the negro attempt 
 to rob the awful and unknown spirit-world of its double 
 sting of loneliness and frowning distance. Does it not 
 envelop him, and out from the unseen depths thereof are 
 not daily darts showered against him ? Hence his solu- 
 tion in this bridging process, i.e. the boast that a de- 
 
262 THINKING BLACK 
 
 ceased mother is still linked with her living children 
 by the very blood she has bequeathed them. That is to 
 say, yonder in that frowning lonely spirit-world, menacing 
 his life at every turn, he has actually a blood kinsman as 
 daysman and representative. She, too, was once hungry, 
 once weary, once jagged with earthly pains and penalties. 
 To prove this link as both intimate and dear I have 
 heard a man murmur in spirit-worship, " Oh, mother, 
 behold this blood now coursing in my body, thou didst 
 not merely bequeath it unto me, but it is thee ! " Here, 
 then, you find the tenacity of belief that he, the living 
 being, can bridge the awful gulf because the dead did 
 not entirely die — did they not leave some of their own 
 literal blood on this earthly side of the gulf as an in- 
 tentional link ? There, then, is his bridge across the 
 chasm, and if you urge that it is not real, but merely his 
 own mad conjecture, he will retort that the bridging 
 initiative was not his at all, but rather that of his own 
 guardian spirit, who will not (because cannot) sever the 
 link between the living and the dead. Instance, even 
 a tiny boy, who, long ago in war, was swooped down 
 on in his natal village — query : How can he worship a 
 mother he never knew ? The boy's retort is that, albeit 
 he was so torn away at birth from his unknown mother, 
 yet surely he, too, was born as much as everybody else. 
 That he never knew her is less than nothing at all to 
 him, for he has only to pinch his flesh to remind himself 
 that she gave him this body. So there he is, working 
 away at the building of his little temple to the '* unknown 
 
THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER 263 
 
 god " — his nameless mother's spirit. For although 
 unknown yet is she well-known, yea, here is her own 
 blood flowing in his own veins. Hence the double 
 deduction he makes that, even in the spirit-world, throb 
 for throb of his earthly joy is hers, even as stab for stab 
 of his pain is hers too. It is all "mother," "mother," 
 mark you, and no mention of his father, for often he does 
 not know his name, and just as often — hush ! the mother 
 knows it not either. 
 
 And so he " bridges the gulf" For does he not believe 
 that in every pang that rends his heart his guardian 
 spirit has a part ? The victim of many a cruel and un- 
 generous blow in life, does he not still reckon on the dear 
 old maternal solicitude for his welfare ? God, he thinks, 
 is too busy up among the stars to bother about him, but 
 not so his " mama." Watch the subtlety of all this, for 
 like a dam of rocks relentlessly solid, here is a barrier 
 ever blocking the advance of the Gospel. To preach 
 Christ as kinsman-advocate before God is to the negro 
 only, in other words, a branch of the same spirit-worship. 
 Wearied by the well of Sychar, thirsty on life's road, 
 and pained with the pangs of suffering, does He not now 
 sorrow with us in our sorrow ? Poor old African, groping 
 after, if haply he may find. The only way he hopes to 
 capture the stronghold of The Unseen is by this flank 
 movement of kinsmanship — to him the line of least 
 resistance, being the warm, cherishing heart of his defunct 
 mother. for ten thousand Christians to advance in 
 the Lord's name and shout to-night above all the wintry 
 
264 THINKING BLACK 
 
 winds of Africa : " I am the way." It is easy to talk 
 loosely of the Gospel of Nature softening men's hearts, 
 but Paul agrees with Tennyson's " Nature red in tooth 
 and claw " when he says that " the whole creation 
 groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now." 
 And it is precisely this moan pouring into the negro ear 
 that makes him think of God as a malio-nant demon, 
 mocking at his pain, and pouring contempt upon his 
 life. The impassive serenity of Nature in all the struggles 
 and anguish of life maddens him into open revolt, for 
 do not the serene stars rise and set with callous calmness 
 over the storm and stress of his life ? There is the Gospel 
 of Nature for you ! Moral : Herein is love : not that we 
 get to love God by looking out on cruel Nature, but that 
 He loved us and gave His Son a Victim of the same 
 cruelty. 
 
 (3rc? Decemhe7\) 
 Have just had a " borderland " talk with an old devil- 
 doctor, and he tells me much about his professional 
 headquarters. Away down the Lualaba the natives 
 have located their " Cathedral of the Congregated Dead " 
 in a dark, umbrageous ravine. Their idea is that for 
 hundreds of miles around the spirits all concentrate into 
 this weird amphitheatre of the dead: "Chivawa," they 
 call the mysterious place, and dead bodies scattered far 
 over hill and dale in their graves — or no grave at all — 
 have each a representative spirit here in their Parliament 
 of the Dead. " The spot where spirits blend " is their 
 phrase, but the blending is in loud debate when tlie 
 
THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER 265 
 
 demons shriek out invectives. In this Assembly there is 
 no President or Mr. Speaker, and the logic of these demon 
 utterances is so illogical that the Lubans have seemingly 
 broken into the spirit-world at the lunatic asylum end. 
 Distinctly Dantesque is this gulf of theirs, the very look 
 of the place suggesting uncanny, supernatural notions. 
 Reluctant daylight only trickles in here and there through 
 the mountain fissures, and as Nature has such a very 
 definite voice to the negro, why wonder that they all 
 seem to hear her proclaim the special sanctity of this wild, 
 woeful region? "Dim religious light" with a caution. 
 The acoustics of the place are so wonderful that a mere 
 whisper is caught up and goes echoing on and on through 
 the galleries and corridors of the mountain. When I 
 passed down there a wet wind was blowing bleak, and the 
 noise came g-roaning out from the Cathedral entrance like 
 a huge organ. Far from being a mere thing of con- 
 temporary gossip, this Chivawa (like its sister- 
 cathedral Songa farther South) is the High Court of 
 Appeal in all tough lawsuits — its yea utterly yea, and its 
 nay, nay. After wrangling out hot legal puzzles in their 
 hot little hamlets, the final word cannot be said until 
 Messrs. Pro and Con go off on their hundred miles 
 tramp to throw themselves for adjudication at the feet of 
 these mighty dead. " The plunge into darkness " is what 
 this sort of legal gambling is called. The old vein of 
 incipient flippancy is now gone utterly, and there these 
 negroes lie prostrate in suspense. He who awakes out of 
 his swoon to find himself beplastered with white chalk — 
 
266 THINKING BLACK 
 
 let the welkin ring, for he is justified. He who, per 
 contra, finds himself covered with charcoal must himself 
 die the death by fire and become charcoal. With all this 
 rival-religion idea of theirs, how hard it is to persuade 
 such a superstitious people that the best way to see Divine 
 Light is to put out their own farthing caudle ! Yet these 
 negroes laugh when you tell them of the prisoner into 
 whose cell the light came through a little crack in the 
 wall. And one day, when they came to destroy the wall, 
 he bitterly lamented because it would destroy the crack 
 through which his daylight came. Our message rings 
 out one note, and one only : " See thy Sin, but behold 
 thy Saviour." 
 
 One rarely seen old man has a great say here : 
 Kavoto, they call him, a weird old magic-magnate who 
 has made the whole land hum with his dark doings among 
 the lions. But how can we distinguish the bones of fact 
 from the drapery of invention ? The cum grano story 
 runs that from far and near he summons his lions to 
 receive their fetish orders ; no doors locked in his forest 
 hamlet, and they trot in and out like friendly mastiff's. 
 At sundown, he sends out this " lion-call," a rumbling roar 
 simulating their cry, and in they bowl to supper. Then 
 it is they are commissioned N., S., E., and W. to raid 
 villages and pick ofi" the various victims of his hate, 
 " orders " being received at this Lion Depot and carefully 
 executed. That is to say, A. deposits a sum in Kavoto's 
 hand for the murdering of B. by lions, and the specialist 
 guarantees results. The old map-makers were right 
 
THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER 2G7 
 
 when, in lieu of any known name to print over this spot in 
 Africa, they put down the eloquent prophecy : Hie stmt 
 Leones. Who told them of this Lion Bureau ? The 
 two mild-mannered chiefs who to-day vouched for these 
 strange doings seemed greatly pained when I hinted that 
 this sort of thing could not be accepted without a certain 
 amount of intellectual jugglery. They repelled my 
 insinuations with real Luban scorn, and to convince me, 
 one of them flew off like a rocket extolling the Lion 
 King's occult powers : proof after proofs he brought 
 into his oration ; grand words to express poor ideas, a 
 racehorse drawing a donkey-cart. Yet very sure am I, 
 Herodotus would have filled pages with just such trash. 
 
 What does it all mean ? Is not all the world under 
 one's waistcoat ? Well, deducting adequate discount 
 only leaves a little balance — but much in that little. 
 For all Africa believes in the transmigration of a living 
 man into a living lion, believes that lions lend their 
 bodies to human beings for the inhuman purpose of 
 grabbing their fellows. This Kavoto knows, and this 
 he capitalises. Hence this opening of a Lion Shop — 
 Transmigration Specialist, wonders while you wait. Pay 
 your money and pick your victim, for does not the name 
 Kavoto mean, the Lurker-to-kill ? Even far-ofi' white 
 men, white dabblers in the black art, have been reported 
 to pay eagerly for the death of a victim ; Arabs, of course, 
 being regular customers. Worse and higher still, it is 
 said — well, never mind what is said. 
 
 17 
 
268 THINKING BLACK 
 
 {3rd December.) 
 I have just had a big brawl with M. over refusing 
 to write out to the Ocean for more powder and guns. 
 The old days of the poisoned arrow are passing, and 
 something with a big bang is the substitute. The lion 
 pulls down the zebra in the moonlight, the leopard 
 springs on the antelope, and, says Mushidi, why not the big- 
 man versus the little man in the war of extermination ? 
 " These were my claws," said he to-day, pointing to some 
 old bows and poisoned arrows of the early days. With 
 the innovation of " Waterloo " flint-locks and "Crimea" 
 cap-guns, of course, the execution has become more 
 drastic and decisive. When Mushidi got his first guns of 
 the " gas-pipe " genus, then it was he really conceived his 
 " God " pretensions ; was not that flasli in the pan of his 
 flint-locks followed by the roar from the barrel a true 
 copy of the Almighty's thunder and lightning ? But he 
 bemoaned the paucity of these " God-firers." His nucleal 
 armoury indeed only boasted the grand total of five flint- 
 locks, and — like the small boy's five loaves of life — what 
 were these five guns of death among so many negroes to 
 be slain ? Thus Mushidi moaned, and the moaning 
 climaxed in a midnight council, with the hatching of a 
 famous miracle-lie. And thus " the gun-lie " ran. Out 
 among the unsophisticated negroes the heresy was 
 preached that Mushidi had not merely omnipotent guns 
 but omniscient bullets. In other words, they were stuff"ed 
 with nonsense that he or his delegate, by merely drawing 
 a gun-trigger at random could thereby send the said 
 
THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER 269 
 
 omniscient bullet, sure as the scent of a blood-hound, 
 zigzagging through the land, dealing death to all desir- 
 able victims. More : they made a double lie out of 
 double bullets ; two bullets like two pills being a double 
 dose of death, the said bullets separating to find 
 different victims ad infinitum. Superstition dies hard, but 
 here in Bunkeya it doesn't die at all. So well does this 
 idea of " God-firing " soak into the negro brain, that 
 when I was down in the Lufira Valley the King's brother 
 corroborated this idea. He had gone out into the 
 savannah to try his Bivanga or luck at hunting a herd 
 of red-buck round the ant-hills ; but when he had hoped 
 to draw upon one of these decisively, flash ! came a vivid 
 fork of lightning, half blinding him for the moment. A 
 second passed, and then he saw nearly the whole heap of 
 buck lying stone dead from the forked flash. Then it 
 was, rubbing his hands with glee, the noble hunter 
 naively said, " Fancy ! God beating me at gun-firing ! " 
 
 It was with this blasphemous idea he pushed his 
 " God " pretensions in Lubaland on going North to 
 Kayumba's. The legend of Kara ya Rova found all over 
 the Garenganze took Mushidi's fancy. This Kara ya 
 Rova is the legendary Creator of the Human Race, called 
 literally the Captain of Humanity, and he it was who 
 headed for the North with the long Indian file of human 
 nations in his wake. We, the whites, were there with 
 our federal ancestor, and they, the blacks, were there too. 
 But spying on the march, day by day, a changing 
 panorama of bewitching vales watered by noble rivers, 
 
270 THINKING BLACK 
 
 they one by one dropped out and turned aside to a lazy 
 lotus life in Africa. We, the hardier whites, held on our 
 Northern way until we were dropped in our respective 
 habitats. Pointing to the mountains, they show you 
 solemnly his alleged "footprints" in the rocks, for in 
 those days, say our good black geologists, " the rocks were 
 soft." These footprints, of course, are a fraud and merely 
 the "pot-holes" common to all the world's river-beds, 
 erosive in character ; nevertheless, it was appropriate that 
 this " footprints-graven-in-the-rocks " idea should catch 
 JMushidi's imagination. Deceiving and being deceived, 
 humbugging and being humbugged his whole life, it was 
 in the essential irony of things that he, The Fraud, should 
 believe such a fraud. The conscious grower of a 
 metaphoric mushroom empire, he vainly longed to go 
 down to posterity at least " written in the rocks," if not 
 with the iron pen of history : was not he, too, " God " as 
 much as Kara ya Rova ? Did not he, too, daily and 
 hourly mould the fates and fortunes of men ? So the fiat 
 went forth, and Mushidi, standing as solemnly as though 
 he were being measured by a shoemaker, got his foot- 
 prints carved out of the rocks. More than that, he had a 
 backgammon board cut out in the rocks — a memorial 
 to all generations. 
 
 Here it was at Kayumba's he, resolving to make a 
 water-bottle never before made by man, flayed a human 
 being to make a water-bottle of the skin. Hence the 
 catch has gone down to posterity, " Mushidi wa funda 
 mu ku funda 7nuntu," the horrible play on the word 
 
THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER 271 
 
 funda beiijg that it means doubly " to teach " and '* to 
 take the skin off," just as, in a weaker sense, a master 
 beating his slave will pun on the same word to say, " I 
 will teach you," i.e. I will beat you till some skin comes 
 off. This skin of a human being is most touchingly 
 called '* the seamless robe," the idea being that when God 
 created man He clothed him with a seamless robe of skin. 
 Little wonder that the memory of the other sacred 
 seamless robe of Calvary came to me very vividly in 
 almost an exactly similar connection as the story of the 
 Roman soldiers gambling for Christ's robe. There, too, 
 in Mushidi's capital were four cut-throats, with red 
 turkey-twill turbans, who had returned from a fight in the 
 North. Swooping down on the town, they had killed off 
 most of the men, dragging South the women and boys 
 as slaves, and here you have four soldiers with only one 
 slave between them. Moot-point : What is to be done ? 
 Why, of course, Teya Buvale, or throw the dice, for 
 ultimate ownership. So there, behold them gambling 
 for a slave, and now it is in the excited gabble of the 
 gamblers you can overhear the snatch-phrases, " Let us 
 gamble for our seamless robe,'" i.e. a human being. But 
 on pushing investigations you find that while this is 
 literally a metaphor for the actual skin, yet as a " whole 
 skin " even in English means a live body, even so there 
 is a double innuendo in Bantu. For the seamless robe of 
 skin is to the negro a type of the unity of that slave's 
 body who could not be cut up into four portions to 
 accommodate the four warriors, hence this gambling : " Let 
 
272 THINKING BLACK 
 
 us not rend it, bat cast lots for it, whose it shall be." As 
 not even a bone of Christ's body was broken, how sug- 
 gestive the fate of both His robe of cloth and robe of flesh ! 
 
 But there is a glimmer in all this gloom. In the 
 darkest den of Africa, the doctrine of the Immortality 
 of the Soul is flaming like a fire, and the deeper you 
 dig the higher it flares. Bii^eds only, too, the door being 
 slammed on quadrupeds. Bird or beast, do not dare 
 suggest to the Luban that animals are immortal. Here is 
 a whole town actually gone ofi" its food and solidly refusing 
 to eat until nem. con. they come to a decision on a ques- 
 tion of — of metaphysics. 'Tis passing strange. When 
 I came on the scene they had been at it for four hours, 
 the debate a wild thing : Has a dog a spirit ? 
 
 The judges were in the blues when I arrived, and in- 
 sisted on my umpiring their hard-mouthed wrangle. The 
 older folks stamp with indignation at the insolent idea, 
 and the Freethinker who set this ball a-rolling is having 
 it hot, the heretic ! At last they have nonplussed him, for 
 he lamely confesses that, of course, dogs as a rule are — 
 well — only dogs, a species of local canine mutton, that is 
 to say, but this dreadful dog was — w-a-s, a wonder. The 
 whole debate, it seems, masks the mouth of a trap, a 
 lawyer's trap, and a law-suit is lurking in the background 
 all the time. For if he can successfully insinuate that an 
 exceptional dog may (ahem !) exceptionally have a spirit, 
 then he is going to have the law on them, for he avers a 
 dead dog is haunting him to his undoing. This dog, be 
 it keenly noted, was not only a hunter's dog but really a 
 
THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER 273 
 
 greater hunter than his master. Day by day, it would 
 go off on its own, lurk on the edge of the plain and, with 
 the spring of a panther, drag down an antelope, a devoted 
 gift to his master. This entente cordiale, between man 
 and dog, went on and on, until the neighbours envied both 
 man and dog ; so one day — dark dies memorabilis — they 
 pounced on the hunter, claiming damages for a slight 
 indiscretion on the animal's part — breach of dog-etiquette, 
 I mean, not man's. Stealing eggs, nothing less, was the 
 accusation. Result : the culprit pug was condemned to 
 have his ears cropped, and with the disappearance of the 
 devoted dog's ears there also disappeared utterly any 
 devoted gifts of game. Knotty point : When he lost his 
 ears, did he lose his scent for game ? Answer : No, not 
 at all ; he went still at it, was still successful in the chase, 
 but — but snubbed his master for permitting them to crop 
 ears. Did he eat his captured game then ? Certainly 
 not ; how could a dog with such a prohibition bred in the 
 bone, how could it dare such a deed ? 
 
 This, then, is what it did do — and here it is we tumble 
 plump into mystery. Adjacent to the townlet is a wild 
 bog into which the Lualaba lavishes its waters, the dense 
 tangle being hopeless and shutting in the water from view. 
 Here it is the dog discovers a hole for hiding his trophies. 
 Day by day (it all came out afterwards) he revengefully 
 rammed down that hole his spoils of the chase, a real case 
 — if you but change one word — of " a dog in the manger " ; 
 he didn't eat the meat himself out of canine honour, and 
 he slyly sav/ to it that nobody else would. Then came 
 
2?4 THINKING BLACK 
 
 (what should have been) the end, but the end is not yet. 
 Poor Bow-wow died, died of chagrin, some said ; died of 
 disdain, said others. And now trouble begins to fall thick 
 and fast among the hunter's friends. You remember that 
 hole in the dark bog and you recall how the dog frequented 
 the spot ; well, that hole, the folks say, is an endless shaft 
 that leads down to the bottomless pit of the demons. 
 This man's brother, at any rate, went there one day, broke 
 through the thick papyrus down to the water, a huge 
 crocodile snapped up at him and down he went with a 
 shriek — yes, down the dead dog's hole. At home, too, in 
 the village, it is the same thing, death after death ; illness 
 after illness, and all doo;o;ing; the hunter's kinsfolk who 
 betrayed the dog. So here you have the whole story of 
 this wrangle, but the town stops its ears and denies that 
 a dog with no spirit can haunt the living. The only 
 haunting a dog does locally is a slight canine indigestion 
 after they have swallowed him. 
 
 So here once more the old idea is proved that im- 
 mortality is not a mere doctrine but an instinct, a much 
 more serious thing. Grotesque and diversified in its 
 million manifestations, no doubt, but a notorious instinct^ 
 and as such sure, yes, surer than the instinct of the bird 
 of passage never deceived in its migrations. Sure as the 
 bee when it elaborates the cell for the future honey- 
 Sure, yes, surer far than that instinct of the butterfly and 
 beetle when they prepare the cradle and the food for the- 
 offspring they will never see. Even Darwin was forced 
 to own the vast ramifications of this instinct of Immor- 
 
''I'' 
 
 THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER 275 
 
 tality among degraded races of men, but curiously argued 
 that " if the human mind was developed from the lowest 
 form of creatures, then how could that mind — human 
 though it was — be trusted in its instincts 1 " Of course, 
 the bewildering part of all this is that the speaker is the 
 same Darwin who sees elsewhere instinct as a mighty 
 guiding law ruling the creation like clockwork, and un- 
 erringly causing the swallow, for instance, to shoot South 
 overseas for the sure sunshine and the flowers. Not by 
 whim or caprice, but by law — the law of instinct — does 
 that swallow dart South to the sun. Then, Mr. Darwin, 
 why deny to the mighty soul what you grant to the 
 small swallow ? Are ye not of more value than many 
 swallows ? Moral : The thirst for the Infinite proves the 
 Infinite. " Sir, I hold," said Emerson — and well spake 
 he— "I hold that God Who keeps His Word with the 
 birds and fishes in all their migratory instincts will keep 
 His word with man." 
 
 (Later.) 
 
 Mushidi was very meek and mild to-day as he 
 received some bold blacksmiths from the South-East. 
 They have him wholly in the hollow of their hand : no 
 smith, no soldier — no Tubal Cain, no sword or plough- 
 share ! 
 
 The best because busiest bees in the hive of Central 
 Africa are these tough old blacksmiths who turn out the 
 iron ore. Long bony hands they have on which the 
 muscles stand out like whipcords. Made not of flesh 
 and blood, but of asbestos, these funny fingers of theirs 
 
276 THINKING BLACK 
 
 can juggle with live coals of fire and scarcely be burned, 
 hence the common conceit is to call their fingers " Fire- 
 tongs " [Fimanto). There is poetry in these brawny 
 blacks, but they live their poetry like men instead of 
 singing it like birds, and far and near they surely have 
 their reward. All eyes look East, Kishinga way, when 
 the roar of the rains is near. Are not those hundreds of 
 miles of smiling African tillaore all traceable to this man 
 who digs the ore from the hillside and manufactures 
 hoes, spears and axes ? Although their ideas are the 
 crudest of the crude, still they combine in a solemn cult 
 the caste of Tubal Cain, let us call it. Bound by a code 
 of stringent laws, these " thou-shalt-nots " are a pathetic 
 mix-up of soul and matter, faith and works, mud and 
 stars. They are sworn to temporal celibacy and severely 
 dieted ; can only eat out of certain pots, and cannot, dare 
 not, eat certain animals — e.g. the hare. Their furnaces 
 make quite a show of hard enterprise, and the function of 
 filling these is the occasion of a solemn fast when no soul 
 of man other than these sons of Tubal Cain can be about. 
 Then it is all the folks shut themselves indoors while this 
 " furnace -feeding " process is going on, the men of the cult 
 calling out menacingly the while. But as most things in 
 Africa are a mad mixture of mind and mud, the fetish, 
 i.e. religious element, is of primary importance in it all. 
 For it is " God's ore," they say, and this Spirit-mediation 
 theory of theirs is only a frank refusal of these blacks to 
 admit that mere stout arms and tough muscles have all 
 the say in God's own world. " Who first drinks, first 
 
THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER 277 
 
 thanks," say they. And this African of ours and his 
 " other- worldliness " is deeply touching — wouldn't even 
 condescend to argue with an Atheist. "How do I know 
 there is a God ? " he asks. " How do I know my goat 
 passed over that wet ground if not by the footprints she 
 left in the mud ? " Thus any such phrase as " laws of 
 Nature" is unknown to him, for an act postulates an 
 • agent, and what is Nature but God's mere minion ? No 
 Atheist could hoodwink a black man with the notion that 
 mere laws explain everything, for your negro retorts, 
 " As if a law does not require construction as well as a 
 world." Another of these men proved the existence of 
 God by the quiet query : " Who ever forgot there was a 
 Sun ? " A proof this that he reads his Book of Nature so 
 well that in every rock and tree God is staring him in 
 the eyes and shouting in his ears. Yet in the teeth of 
 this, such an expert as Burton could insist that " the 
 necessity of a Creator, so familiar to our minds, is gener- 
 ally strange to savages. In the present day, the African 
 races generally have never been able to comprehend the 
 existence or the necessity of a One God." Fie, Sir Richard ! 
 Even Cicero lono- ago could declare that " there is no nation 
 so brutish as not to be imbued with the conviction that 
 there is a God." So, too, Plutarch : " We may search 
 the world throughout, and in no region where man has 
 lived cnn we find a city without the knowledge of a God 
 or the practice of a religion." And the whole continent 
 of Africa choruses an eager " Yes ! " to these ancients. 
 * * * 
 
278 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Some more eye-opening " thinking black." This 
 pug-nosed negro of ours has really a brain of phenomenal 
 range. This you can best believe by wiping off the old 
 slander that he is poor in numeration, for his unit is the 
 " terrible- ten " — another pinprick this, I know, into the 
 bubble of tradition. Terrible ten, indeed, for starting so 
 ominously with a round number he soon soars into the 
 blue of arithmetic. Thus, leaving hundred (Chitota) and 
 "thousand" (Chihumhi) far behind, he reaches the figure 
 for a million {Mudinda). Then with this as a jumping- 
 ground, he leaps forward into planetary arithmetic in the 
 word Diita, a million times a million. Here, however, 
 his mind calls a halt, for man's empire is lost in the 
 numeration of immensity, nevertheless he tricks the 
 tongue into coining a word — Diona — the " all " things, 
 that is to say. The panther spring of the black brain is 
 now baffled, but not beaten, and far up in those giddy 
 heights he starts to dare classify grades of immensity. 
 For this Diona is (1) the speechless; (2) the voice- 
 stifling; (3) the measure-defying; (4) the unthinkable. 
 A daring "grand total" idea this, of locking up all 
 expanse in the universe into one word. Asked, however, 
 to be concrete, and not abstract, he says, with an apologetic 
 flourish of metaphor : The grand total of all immensity 
 may be stated in terms of — ashes : id est, all things 
 viewed as separate units must be conceived as the finest 
 powdered ashes ever known to man. For unthinkably 
 fine though they be, they are yet only a mass of 
 granular units ! Thus quaintly and unquestionably the 
 
THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER 279 
 
 African can philosophically say, '' Praise is silent before 
 Thee, God, in Zion." Very inflated all this, to be sure, 
 and very much like mere man soaring up to the blue in 
 a toy balloon ; yet, nevertheless, here is proof of grey 
 matter in the black brain. Certainly here is a man who 
 deserves better than the Government dog-bark of auto- 
 cracy ; even as here is the real reason of many a black 
 bark answering white bark in revolt. Depend upon it, ye 
 rulers with the Rod, this black man is as strong in brain 
 as in biceps. 
 
 (Later.) 
 We Missionaries are accused of making big bouncing 
 assertions about our African's mental ability, and even 
 many a good friend of the negro claims to be forgiven if 
 he cannot hear of this without impatience. Living as the 
 black man does at the very bottom of Life's hill, the 
 inference is surely a very fair one, that the African is 
 mentally incapable of seeing anything in the light of an 
 abstract principle. Hence that weary and too confident 
 assertion that this African of ours cannot possibly be 
 strong in abstract ideas. The late Dean Farrar may be 
 isolated as a serious type of such friendly academic critics, 
 and what I propose to do is to quote Farrar as a heavy 
 philologist against the negro and then proceed forthwith 
 to hand him over to the tender mercies of the two great 
 African grammarians. That is to say. Dean Farrar, a 
 good negrophile, is to be viewed impersonally as a very 
 fair type of the average Oxford Don critic who subjectively 
 decides on a question really not in his sphere. Appleyard 
 
" The vaunted wealth of Bantu 
 turns out to be a concealment of 
 their poverty. It is due to that 
 utter deficiency in abstract" 
 
 Farrar. 
 
 280 THINKING BLACK 
 
 and the late Clement Scott will on the negro side be 
 quoted as representing the two extremes of a long line of 
 Bantu study. Of course, as nothing short of philosophy 
 is our pro-negro claim, w^e will be slavishly literal, and 
 cling hard to this one test-word : The Abstract. Philosophy 
 is the Abstract. If, therefore, the African can be authori- 
 tatively proved to be strong in the Abstract, then the 
 African, ipso facto, is proved to be a philosopher. 
 
 " Bantu is highly systematic and 
 truly philosophical." 
 
 Appleyard. 
 
 " The (Bantu) language has the 
 fullest expression of the abstract 
 one has met with ; broad and 
 delicate in its conception, essenti- 
 ally suaviter in modo, fortiter in 
 re/" Clement Scoti'. 
 
 Here, then, we behold in sharp juxtaposition the oldest 
 story of pro and con cross-swearing in the world : Farrar's 
 loose subjective vagaries confronted with hard, stubborn, 
 objective data. What a swing of the pendulum from 
 zero to hundred ! Is black white, or crooked straight ? 
 This is the thing honest men yawn over — arm-chair 
 dogmatism in England breaking a lance with " the man 
 on the spot" — our venerable friend Quod Erat Demon- 
 strandum Esquire smiling down so condescendingly on 
 plain Mr. Quod Erat Faciendum. The former correct and 
 subjective to his finger-tips ; the latter with his jacket off 
 sweating over objective data, filling dozens of note-books. 
 For Dr. Clement Scott is surely a good example of being 
 
THUS FAR AND NO FARTHER 281 
 
 very, oh ! very mucli Mr. Faciendum. If his above- 
 quoted words seem to be exaggerated and sweeping 
 (" the fullest expression of the abstract one has met with " !), 
 does he not substantiate them all in his 737 pages of 
 genuine Bantu idiom ? Tortuous and tricky, and to 
 the tune of hundreds of instances, he it is who has 
 followed the marvellous negro far into the penetralia 
 of " thinking black." Emerging from it all, in a wonder 
 that is almost dismay, Dr. Scott gasps — for " gasp " is 
 the w^ord — that Bantu has " the fullest expression of the 
 ahstr^act one has yet met with." And philosophy is the 
 Abstract, remember ; er(/o the African is proved to be 
 both brainy and beefy — in fact, has brain as w^ell as biceps. 
 Contrast Farrar's serious assertion as to the African's 
 " utte7^ deficiency in ahstract " ! 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 Red Sunsets 
 
"Ah, the land of the rusthng of wings, which is 
 beyond the rivers of Ethiopia." Isaiah. 
 
 " In that time [from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia] 
 shall a present be brought unto the Lord of hosts of 
 a people scattered and peeled, and from a people 
 terrible from their beginning hitherto: a nation 
 meted out and trodden under foot, whose land 
 the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of 
 the Lord of hosts, the mount Zion," Isaiah. 
 
 "Oh the generations old 
 Over whom no church-bell tolled, 
 Christless, lifting up blind eyes 
 To the silence of the skies ! 
 For the innumerable dead 
 My soul is disquieted." 
 
 ■iS4 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 Red Sunsets 
 
 TyT/' HEREAl the reader is sad, for 
 the adjective is found to enter 
 the superlative degree — black, blacker, 
 blackest. 
 
 {7th December.) 
 
 ONE for Mushidi ! He tells me that he has never 
 yet suffered living sacrifices in the capital here, 
 whereas all around every little H.K.H. Nobody 
 cannot be buried without them. These terrible tales — 
 " red sunsets," they are called — are hardly tellable, for 
 here it is we reach the part of this diary that should 
 really be written in red ink. The sun (i.e. the Chief) is 
 sinking, and he must sink in red — a real scarlet sunset, 
 and no mistake. It is quite certain that every poor 
 chieflet demands his regal right to drag down with 
 him to the nether world at least one or two splendid 
 specimens of the human kind. Mpaki is the dread 
 technical term for this institution, and these are mostly 
 women-folk, the demand being that the living sacri- 
 fice must have no blemish. No wonder when an 
 i8 
 
286 THINKING BLACK 
 
 African hears tliat line of the Bible he shudders : 
 " The rich man died, and was buried." Instinctively 
 they think of a holocaust with its stream of blood ; 
 and then it is Jeremiah's famous " weepers " put in an 
 appearance, professional tear-manufacturers fehese, who 
 produce — for a consideration — "tortoise-tears" (sic) by 
 the jar-ful. " Consider ye, and call for the mourn- 
 ing women, that they may come ; and send for cunning 
 women, that they may come : and let them make haste, 
 and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run 
 down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters " 
 (Jer. ix. 17) — how often have these words been uttered 
 in Lubaland ! Two of the prettiest wives are gloriously 
 dressed and anointed with oil to accompany the corpse 
 to the "west coast of Africa," i.e. the spirit-world 
 (Kumhonshi), and never, never to come back again.^ 
 They always say that these and the like go to their 
 own death with alacrity ; and when I protest later, 
 they remind me of a case very well known to me by 
 a personal link. That is the Mbogo Senior incident 
 down in the Sera plain. At the Mj^aki ceremony, 
 and against all entreaty to the contrary, the infirm old 
 wife of his youth insists upon accompanying her own 
 consort down into the tomb of suffocation. She brushes 
 aside the younger folks, and orders the catching and 
 cooking of her best barn-yard fowl for her own last 
 supper. She assists in her own "death toilet," her own 
 
 1 That is to .say, the Betting sun symbolises tlie advent of dark night, 
 i.e. death. 
 
A LUBAN LADY, 
 
«-,€ ' C, 
 
RED SUNSETS 287 
 
 clcajising, and her own anointing unto her own burial. 
 "Nay, who should go with my lord but me?" said 
 she in response to the "death-orchestra" of the wailing 
 cunning women who were raining down "tortoise- tears." 
 And then, in the evening, when the sough of the first 
 night-wind passes over the great fen-bog, behold this 
 old living sacrifice hobbling along with her gourd tobacco 
 pipe in its little basket to attend her own funeral — no 
 w^ail : nothing ! and the dark eternal sets in. There, in 
 a death of suffocation, she received her " John Anderson, 
 my Jo!" in death's embrace, in life and death one. 
 Surely, here in a pathetic sense we see them sleeping 
 together at the foot of life's hill, after many " a cantie 
 day " together. On the surface, here is the kind of 
 incident claimed as a feather in the cap of polygamy, 
 and a mad Mormon would challenge monogamy to produce 
 in like environment a like demonstration of conjugal 
 aff'ection. But such conjugal love of two souls only 
 proves monogamy. Only a week before their twin-death 
 and burial, who should come up from the plains to pay 
 us a most punctilious visit but precisely this dear old 
 lady, Mrs. John Anderson, and her Jo, of course ! They 
 hobbled over the hill together, a true instance of negro 
 man and wife who had projected their last visit to 
 " town," as they call our Luanza. A brief week thence 
 saw the tragedy. 
 
 {Later.) 
 By far the most exasperating " red sunset " known 
 to me was the death of my old friend of years, the great 
 
288 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Chona. As Lord Paramount, he was the owner of broad 
 lands, and what could you expect ? Still, that is just 
 the sore point, for we had lofty hopes that the Chona 
 — " Destroyer," the translation — in his peaceful death 
 would create a clean and bloodless precedent for the 
 young generation. Now it ekes out that one of his 
 strongest reasons for not becoming a Christian was his 
 fear that he would lose the divine honours of a vermilion 
 sunset. What a poor King Jesus Christ was (he argued) 
 to die in darkness as a felon ! How, then, did this Chona 
 holocaust eventuate ? After all, it is only another proof 
 that the African at home is lord of his own soil, and 
 can outwit a white man any day. Even your Sherlock 
 Holmes would soon find mere fertility of brain handi- 
 capped by the fact that he was only one against a million, 
 l^r, when this great Chona fell ominously sick, I saw to 
 it that several lynx-eyed negroes were hanging around, 
 their plea for loitering being the medicine I had sent. 
 Nevertheless, long ago the old councillors, who sniffed 
 treason in the very appearance of these Mission negroes, 
 have plotted their being outwitted — and remember, for 
 Reynard to outwit Reynard, the subtlety must be a 
 marvel. "As false as a bulletin," became a proverb 
 in the days of Napoleon ; so these old " death-doctors " 
 copied France, and resolved to create a strong diversion 
 to the North. Thus at daybreak the news (as first bulletin 
 for the day) was on everybody's lips that the sick King 
 had been removed by night to the North — the heat, the 
 marsh, the billions of mosquitoes, the ostensible plea for 
 
RED SUNSETS 289 
 
 the change of hospital. (Eiitre nous, the King is really 
 
 dead in his house, but no "red sunset" can take place 
 
 while the enemy, in the form of my messengers, is 
 
 ambushed witliin tlie sacred atmosphere of death.) But 
 
 they have been outwitted, sure enough ; and when all 
 
 is in train for a start, out they spring like panthers 
 
 from the dead King's hut, blood having already begun to 
 
 flow in the death of the weary old nurse who got sudden 
 
 death as lier nursing fee. Silently as suddenly they 
 
 now slam the door of the harem, wherein a dozen wives 
 
 are cooped up like animals for the sacrifice; and the 
 
 slam of that door is answered by their moan. The "red 
 
 sunset" begins. As, however, it is all ceremonial in 
 
 character, this "charnel-house" work has a "method 
 
 in its madness." There is, first of all, we have seen, 
 
 that sacrifice of the old nurse ; then comes another human 
 
 sacrifice before the royal corpse can cross the threshold. 
 
 Then the whole Via Dolorosa to the tomb is "painted 
 
 red"^ — another human life has perforce to pay toll for 
 
 the corpse to pass the town gate ; then, en route, by 
 
 a sort of " minute-gun " arrangement, death follows death 
 
 till the tomb is reached. Of course, old scores are wiped 
 
 out in blood along that "path of thorns" {sic), and 
 
 the man or woman who on that day has no brothers 
 
 or cousins among the wire-pullers is in peril of his 
 
 carcass being given to the fowls of the air. But these 
 
 things are only the beginning of sorrows and the end 
 
 is not yet — the end, in fact, is indescribable. For the 
 
 tomb itself is the climax in a double sense. Down in 
 
290 THINKING BLACK 
 
 the huge pit there are the deaths from suffocation ; and 
 up in the sunlight, on the new-made mound of earth, there 
 is a thing called " the blood-plaster " (Kushinga ne milopa). 
 A mere plebeian negro can only boast of a mud-and-water 
 plaster, but old King Coal claims a blood-and-mud one. 
 
 # # «: 
 
 Here is the reddest "sunset" of them all. From red 
 
 we have gone to redder, and now let us round it all off 
 
 with reddest. For the adjective has surely entered the 
 
 sad superlative degree : the groans on the crescendo ; 
 
 deaths amounting sweepingly and authentically to the 
 
 *' wipe out " of a ivhole town. Note the italics, for there 
 
 is nothing visionary or elusive here. The mother and the 
 
 babe unborn, the family of six or seven strapping sons, 
 
 the boisterous band of precocious negro youngsters, the 
 
 grandfathers and the grandmothers — all, cent per cent, 
 
 dead in a heap, plus King, plus Queen, plus satellite 
 
 concubines. Did I know the man ? Yes, very familiarly. 
 
 Could I authenticate such a sweeping " wipe-out " of 
 
 human beings ? Yes, to the satisfaction of every reader 
 
 of this book. Am I talking in tens or in hundreds ? 
 
 Hundreds certainly, and not tens. And that is where 
 
 the story begins, the whole tale hinging on the sweeping 
 
 character of this annihilation of a solid town. Figures, 
 
 I know too well, are tricky things in Africa — witness 
 
 the modern tentative census papers. But, granted they 
 
 all entered a trap ; granted, likewise, this death-trap had 
 
 no vestige of a back door ; granted, further, only three 
 
 souls emerged therefrom, more dead than alive — and then 
 
RED SUNSETS 291 
 
 surely the deduction is inexorable that the whole town 
 was wiped out of existence. I seem to see that old friend 
 of mine now while I write. A brave chief, he added to 
 his prowess in war the exceptional merit of being a 
 laborious hunter. Big-game hunter all his life, hundreds 
 of animals had fallen to his old flint-lock ; but in 
 his youth he had been soured by a dastardly act of 
 mutilation, an enemy having cropped his ears. When 
 we met, he was a dreaded "Black Flag" in revolt who 
 had taken to the Likurwe Hills, pouncing down on passing 
 caravans, and demanding all their powder, lest it should 
 pass on into his enemy's country and be used ultimately 
 against him. One such caravan so tied up was our own 
 Mission's, a band of Biheans probably two hundred strong. 
 Resident as I was in his enemy's country, it was a 
 precarious business to cross the lines and enter his 
 stronghold ; the Black Flag, remember, does not know 
 the Red Cross. That visit, however, was a success ; and 
 having struck a bargain which acknowledged his right 
 to the plundering us of all powder, we bade the last 
 farewell. As we were parting for ever, he slyly un- 
 coiled his turban, revealing the Royal cropped ears, 
 much as Caesar might have done with the wreath he 
 wore to hide his baldness. "Look," said he, "I am 
 fighting for my lost ears." Poor Rob Roy, he had only 
 a few years of life, and then came his Turneresque 
 sunset, when he dragged the whole town with him down 
 to the grave. The story is a cave-tale, and would literally 
 be entitled " The Last of the Troglodytes." The trap in 
 
292 THINKING BLACK 
 
 which they all died was a limestone cave, and so utterly 
 did they disappear from mortal ken that natives will be 
 wary of all such subterranean holes in future. Briefly, it 
 came fearfully and finally to this. When this chief made 
 his last stand, he retreated back on this hu^e cave, 
 resolved to die grandly, impressively, and magnificently 
 — die with all his people round him like a winding-sheet — 
 a common cave-coffin for the lot. Lono; ag;o he had made 
 his dispositions for such a startling " sunset " ; so with a rush, 
 and under cover of night, the whole town stampeded into 
 the trap, a cave seductively large, provisions in abundance, 
 and firewood. But alas ! unlike many of its spacious 
 sister-caves with as many tunnels as a burrow, this was 
 only a long deceptive "blind-alley" — bhnd the cave, and 
 doubly blind the hunted-down negroes who entered it. 
 For with a salvo of applause the enemy now rushes up 
 to the cave's mouth and seals the entombed doom of 
 all that horde of foolish fugitives. There is no shriek, 
 meanwhile, from these runaways. Oh no, only the 
 beginning of the long, lingering end. With a refinement 
 of cruelty, the enemy now sits down at the cave mouth 
 and starts to "plug the leak," a process this involving 
 the blocking of the cave's mouth with rocks ; then, over 
 the rocks, a banking of earth — thus pathetically and 
 literally making it a colossal tomb with the old orthodox 
 mound of earth on the top. And so autumn wanes. 
 The long days pass, days in which, with sinister signifi- 
 cance, the great blue-bottle flies hum in and out of the 
 chinks of the rocks to tell the tale of corruption. 
 
TIED SUNSETS 293 
 
 But what about those three women who escaped ? 
 Listen ! Some weeks elapse ; then out through one of 
 the limestone chinks vou can hear a cj^entle moan — tell- 
 tale moan of a human beins;. There it is ao;ain, and this 
 time, out through the same chink, comes a wail of the 
 moribund : " We are all dead. Oh, let me out ! " She is 
 a woman moaning, none other than Nanga, who used to 
 live over at Munema village. Outside the bully warriors 
 are shaking with fear at this voice from the tomb. Then 
 they summon up courage to challenge her that she is 
 lying, and that she has only returned from the dead to 
 be their undoing. But the answer they get is her 
 sepulchral offer that if they will only disentomb her, 
 she will gladly permit her two hands and feet to be cut 
 off, if she is found to have lied to them : "0 ye out 
 in the sunlight, sitting down to the banquet of life, let 
 me out from this Lake of Fire." So at Ions: last here 
 she comes, extricated from the cruel debris to the light 
 of day — she and two poor half-dead mortals. Yes, they 
 bring a gruesome tale from that "land of the dead," a 
 tale of slow^, lingering emaciation and dissolution. First 
 the food failed, then the faggots, and then came the 
 exasperated expedients for firewood — all the old gun- 
 stocks and spear-shafts burned off first. Then — good- 
 night ! — the great gleaming tusks of ivory. This tomb- 
 cave, be it noted, was also the chiefs treasure-trove, and 
 there lay the accumulated ivory of years. Thus he died 
 in his glory, heated at a funeral blaze of burning ivory, 
 " Emperor's Fuel," they call it. It beggars all description. 
 
294 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Just one gleam of glory shoots up before darkness de- 
 scends. Not long before, I found myself in that doomed 
 town preaching in the moonlight with a tragic intensity. 
 Surely in a glad, good way this was a silent, secret factor 
 in their eternal destiny. 
 
 (9th Decemher.) 
 
 Notwithstanding all his mad mob of cut-throats, 
 I opine that Mushidi will not be able to reckon on 
 even one solid band of braves when the day of doom 
 draws near. Here they are in thousands, all armed with 
 *' Tower" guns, but nothing even faintly approaching 
 the idea of a Tenth Legion of Caesar or an Old Guard of 
 Napoleon. True, he can count on many a strong in- 
 dividual, nearly all the satraps round the throne being 
 linked by marriage to the despot : Kasamina and 
 Mumoneka, with many more, are as brave as loyal. But 
 mere personal prowess can never be equivalent to the 
 discipline of the machine. Besides, this free-lance idea 
 only means that every leader is playing for his own 
 hand ; and when that works out (as it often does) at one 
 courtier against another, then the foundations are shaky. 
 Really a kingdom within a kingdom is the idea, and the 
 concentric waves make rings within rings of plot and 
 counterplot. 
 
 Still, there is no man in the whole land who cringes 
 so submissively as just one of these great ministers, and 
 Mushidi persistently repels them with a pelting storm 
 of abuse. Not once but several times he has sized up 
 a too ambitious type of Joab minister, and got rid of 
 
RED SUNSETS 295 
 
 him in the polite old way of sending him off to kill 
 or be killed in war. Even his own princes he treats 
 in the same " go -to -shear -and -be -shorn " way, the 
 recent case of his son Chamunda being notorious. Too 
 enamoured of his father's own wife, Mushidi at once 
 ordered him up to the North to fight Chona ; and after 
 a year's hard struggle the poor prince came back, broken 
 in two bones, a cripple for life. 
 
 And this, remember, is the regular treatment meted 
 out to any black son of Zeruiah who is too strong for 
 him. With the ladies, however, it is drastically different, 
 and even a dame of high status is coolly executed in 
 the capital as an advertisement in harem discipline. 
 Who will ever forget the great death of Queen Matayu ? 
 Here was a lady of lineage, brought in from the Far 
 East by the Arabs as an offset to the Maria de Fonseca 
 marriage of the Portuguese, the two Oceans bidding for 
 Mushidi's commerce with the debasing bribe of rival 
 queens. Poor Mushidi, he has had to pay for it in 
 blood, this Eastern marriage ; for does not the native 
 proverb say, "Eat the bait, and you are on the hook"? 
 Certainly, this Arab bait was seductive ; but as the 
 days passed the news began to spread round the capital 
 that the " Eastern Lady " (Mukodi Wa Kavanga) was 
 a Jezebel of no ordinary sort. Death after death by 
 poisoning was brought to her door, the climax being an 
 attempt on her own son. "Oh!" said Mushidi, "we 
 will soon settle that " ; and forthwith he convened a 
 council of elders, who doomed her to die. So there and 
 
296 THINKING BLACK 
 
 then, with no dawdle, and ignoring all political com- 
 plications of the future, Tete and Kavalo, two generals, 
 went across to Munema, and were received of this 
 Jezebel with her usual smirk of coquetry. Invited into 
 her own house on a plea of privacy, she was strangled 
 on the spot as a witch, the mob in the capital declaring 
 that Mushidi was perfection in so scorning the high 
 status of such a grand dame. Cast out on the Lunsala 
 Flats, that distinguished witch's body was despised by 
 every passer-by, and speedily became carrion for the 
 scavenger hyenas ever on the prowl. Jezebel, I have 
 called her, because that name in her last moments 
 became awfully and literally appropriate. For as these 
 executioners entered her courtyard, the good-as-dead 
 woman cried out the most ancient greeting in Africa : 
 "Is it peace?" (Mutendef) And in that subsequent 
 hurried strangling of their victim they could be heard 
 literally answering the old Jehu taunt : " What peace 
 so long as your whoredoms and witchcrafts are so 
 many ? " But Mushidi has not had long to wait before 
 he learns that here is only another annoying illustration 
 of the fact that women are the source of all his woes. 
 The roar for revenge can now be heard on his Eastern 
 boundary, the Rugarugas taking the field as champions 
 of the dead Jezebel. Thus it comes to pass that the 
 dead Masengo is the casus belli of his Sanga civil war, 
 just as in the East another wild war is waging over the 
 death of Queen Matayu. Does this justify the Spanish 
 saying, "Where woman is, there trouble is"? 
 
BOOK III 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 ** Nemesis, Daughter of Night " 
 
"Though the mills of God grind slowly, 
 Yet thej'^ grind exceeding small ; 
 Though with patience He sits waiting, 
 With exactness grinds He all." 
 
 "Instead of enquiring why the Roman Empire 
 was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it 
 
 subsisted so long." Gibbon. 
 
 "Down they come these ancient nations— down 
 they come one after another, for lack of righteous- 
 ness." Matthew Arnold. 
 
 ■98 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 ** Nemesis, Daughter of Night" 
 
 TyJT' HEREIN the reader ponders 
 the profound difference between 
 eating what you like and liking what 
 you eat. 
 
 ri'lHE end is not far off now, for here in this large 
 I rambling metropolis you see Mushidi fiddling while 
 his Rome is burning. If ever the clock of destiny 
 struck with decision it is just now, the final simultaneous 
 smash of such varied and conflicting elements all falling like 
 one well-aimed blow. (By the way, see here, once again, 
 how God can rule by His over-ruling.) For now, when 
 these Rugarugas begin to drive in the Eastern end of the 
 Empire, now it is the Sanga civil war has broken out 
 right in the capital. And precisely as though these 
 propitious events have all been elaborately telegraphed 
 across the seas, now it is that Europe gets excited about 
 Katanga. This year 1890 is, indeed, a climax date in the 
 high politics of " the scramble for Central Africa." For, 
 if to be first in time is to be first in dignity, then the 
 English claim the country. As far back even as 1875 
 Lovett Cameron's great journey across Africa had 
 
 2i;d 
 
300 THINKING BLACK 
 
 revealed the Katanga country as a highly mineralised 
 territory, and ever since then Cecil Rhodes and his 
 disciples had mentally annexed it for South Africa. The 
 British argument for annexation, if not logical, is at least 
 geographical, for is not Katanga a true dependency of 
 South Africa ? Moreover, the Congo is far too unwieldy ; 
 and has not Belgium bitten off more than it can chew ? 
 Would Katanga have ever had sleeping sickness if linked 
 up with the Cape and not with Boma ? Thus it was that 
 while four ponderous Belgian expeditions are slowly con- 
 centrating on Katanga, an Englishman forestalls them all. 
 Much to King Leopold's chagrin, and before his elaborate 
 caravans are above the horizon, Mr. Alfred Sharpe (now, 
 of course. Sir Alfred) wins his spurs by walking right into 
 Mushidi's den with a mere handful of boys : proposal, 
 Annexation by Great Britain. At first it was all too 
 exasperating, this blunt diplomacy, a plenipotentiary with 
 scarcely a shirt on his back. Repelled by Mushidi, and 
 indeed almost murdered had he known it, Mr. Sharpe 
 went back East, never dreaming that the grim chief was 
 so struck by his honesty that he was soon to relent and 
 recall him. For relent he did. If you will allow me to 
 be slightly autobiographical, probably this tale can best be 
 told in the first person singular. It was on this wise. 
 One morning when I turned up at Court to salute, the 
 King startled me out of all my company manners by 
 appearing in hat, coat, and trousers, and, wearing his tie 
 under the left ear, insisted that English, and English only, 
 was his Court language. Then he roared loud and long, 
 
"NEMESIS, DAUGHTER OF NIGHT" 301 
 
 and this was the kind of thing : — The King was pleased to 
 say that he had slept well and — to a purpose. The King 
 (invention again !) was glad to greet one more of the 
 many thousands of Englishmen known to him. The 
 King was pleased to order that the Union Jack of red, 
 white, and blue was the only pleasing political combination 
 of colours in the world. That English likewise was the 
 only true speech of man, and he would make all speak it. 
 This command he followed up with a rigmarole dream of 
 " London Town," curious impressionist sketch of that 
 great capital compounded of Arab fables and our narratives, 
 the only sure thing being the blinking lamps down all the 
 London streets. He had been there last night per dream 
 chariot, and was just back: "Goody morning! goody 
 morning ! all of you." Next he springs a surprise on me, 
 a Missionary trapped into politics. For, having thus 
 personally visited England — by moonshine — and verified 
 " London Town " as the world's greatest village — " The 
 King's Kraal" — he now desires me to recall Kadindo 
 (Sir Alfred Sharpe), and he will give him his gold, give 
 him his land — or more, if he stickles for it. No mere 
 passing whim this of Mushidi's, as Dr. Moloney proves 
 later in his pro-Belgium book. ** Captain Stairs," writes 
 Moloney, " for close on four hours plied Mushidi with 
 argument upon argument to induce him to take the 
 Belgian flag — he was willing to receive the Ingereza 
 (English) flag, but not that of the Free State." 
 
 This, mind you, from a member of the Belgian 
 expedition, and proof positive that I did not engineer the 
 
302 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Anglo-Mushidi entente cordiale. Well aware am I how 
 puerile all this must seem to my Belgian friends — I, a 
 Britisher, puffing my own race in the third person. 
 Nevertheless, there you have the naked truth of the 
 matter, and history owes to Mushidi the attestation that 
 he did shout : " Sons of the dust, we know the English 
 to be the true people ! " No amount of arguing, explain- 
 ing, and smoothing down could convince a Belgian that 
 this writing East to bring in the English was on Mushidi's 
 genuine initiative. All the appearances are against us, and 
 they naturally only see in all this one more instance of 
 the unplumbed depths of English subtlety. Yet the fact 
 is, wdth these good Belgians pressing down so belligerently 
 from the North, Mushidi proposed the oldest and 
 simplest of black tactics — namely, the exploiting of one 
 white nation against the other. Memo, for Missionaries : 
 Do not dabble in " high politics," so called ; our politics 
 are higher than the high. 
 
 So time goes on until one eventful day a roar from 
 the North tells of the advent of the Belgians, and here 
 comes brave Paul Le Marinel first. He has been followinfr 
 up the Sankuru from Lusambo, and, escalading the 
 Mitumba Range, arrives at the capital only to be repelled 
 by the Emperor. The founder of the first Congo State 
 poste in Katanga, his arrival was desolated by a cruel 
 fire, the huge caravan of supplies going up in smoke, and 
 jeopardising the future occupancy of the country. Poor 
 Legat and Verdickt, who remained, have many a hard 
 day's fare in store for them, yet to these able men the 
 
"NEMESIS, DAUGHTER OF NIGHT " 303 
 
 Congo State in Katanga owes all. After this first 
 
 expedition, a pause ; then comes Delcommune, a late 
 
 second. He has followed up the Lomami, and striking 
 
 Lake Kissale on the 27th August, 1891, arrives at the 
 
 capital 6th October. Item : Lost Lieutenant Hankansson 
 
 at Kiukondia, killed by the Lubans. Item : Makes over- 
 
 tures to Mushidi, and is repelled. No. 3 Expedition is 
 
 still from the North, and led by a charming gentleman, 
 
 Captain Bia of the Guides — the same explorer this who, 
 
 in the following May, died in my arms away South at 
 
 Ntenke's. (The same Bia this who executed the murderer 
 
 of Major Barttelot, leader of Stanley's rear column.) But 
 
 none of these men struck a blow, and it was reserved for 
 
 an Englishman to hoist the Congo flag. This was 
 
 Stanley's friend Stairs, who was then slowly advancing 
 
 from Zanzibar ; a poor man he, daily embarrassed with the 
 
 stabbing idea that he, an officer holding the Queen's 
 
 commission, was called upon to repel the advance of his 
 
 own Union Jack. He it was who intercepted Mushidi's 
 
 written command by my hand to recall Sir Alfred Sharpe. 
 
 Fancy an officer with a delicate and scrupulous sense of 
 
 honour waking up to the piercing realisation that he had 
 
 become the tool of a foreigner, drawing Belgian money 
 
 to combat English pretensions ! The truth is, this poor 
 
 fellow was trapped into a very delicate position, not of his 
 
 own seeking ; and as the days advanced, the monstrous 
 
 enigma of his anti-English duties became a nightmare to 
 
 him. Dying as he did before leaving Africa, I have sad 
 
 reason for believing that this brooding over the dilemma 
 19 
 
304 THINKING BLACK 
 
 hastened his untimely end. Nicholas i. of Russia died of 
 bronchitis : so the bulletin said. But did he ? Did he 
 not rather die of Alma and Inkermann ? ' ' His was, " wrote 
 Mr. Stanley of Stairs, "one of those rare personalities 
 oftener visible among military men than among civilians, 
 who could obey orders without argument, and without 
 ado or fuss execute them religiously : courageous, careful, 
 watchful, diligent, and faithful." 
 
 And now for the ending of an epoch, for the capital 
 is at last giving unmistakable signs of that process 
 known as *' breaking up." From the East came Mushidi 
 long ago, and here comes Nemesis from the same quarter. 
 Sitting talking with an Arab one day in his verandah — 
 the 28th November — behold, five Zanzibaris march in 
 from the East, turbaned, and armed with breech-loaders. 
 The sentimental if not substantial element in this advance 
 guard is that their leader is Stanley's own Masoudi, and 
 he bears a letter from Stairs, who is advancing slowly 
 from the Lualaba expedition, 300 strong, and armed to 
 the teeth. This historic letter is one of the usual charm- 
 ing billets-doux in which Captain Stairs and his four 
 companions formally presented their " salaams " prelimin- 
 ary to presenting their arms. They, says the epistle, are 
 coming to clothe the naked land and are only bent on 
 acting peaceably. Finally, after much groping about for 
 Mushidi's weak spot, the letter cleverly finds it in 
 rounding off with the lucky phrase : " I am the English- 
 man * Lord of Artillery ' {Btvana Mzinga), W. E. Stairs." 
 Finds it, in all conscience, Mushidi's weak spot, for 
 
"NEMESIS, DAUGHTER OF NIGHT" 305 
 
 although all his instincts are up in arms against these 
 intruders, yet this happy tag of Stairs as to national- 
 ity quite makes Mushicli's heart "white," as he terms it. 
 " They are English, do you hear, sons of the dust ? " 
 shouts Mushidi to the crowd of people, " and we know 
 the English to be true people." Then he blows a heavy 
 blast through his nostrils and orders me to write out 
 his royal reply. Not a philippic this, but a chat on paper 
 in which Stairs, with wave of royal hand, is invited 
 to come on and put these Belgians in their proper place. 
 Once or twice I was just reaching for a metaphoric bucket 
 of cold water to dash on Mushidi's political plans, when 
 he struck in again and again with his favourite and 
 favourable description of the English people — too 
 favourite and too favourable, as time would tell. 
 
 Now comes the great Lord Mayor's Show day — 14th 
 December — when I am delegated by H.R.H. Mushidi 
 to push out to the suburbs and meet the advancing 
 expedition, orders being stringent that I must lead them 
 to a stipulated camping-ground in the capital — there or 
 nowhere. Lean and travel-stained, here they come at 
 last out of the grass with flags flying, Captain Bodson, 
 the Marquis de Bonchamps, Dr. Moloney and Robinson, 
 led by Stairs, who headed the Indian file. Fresh and 
 trig from Europe, how they stare at me in my bush rags 
 and shaggy, unmanageable whiskers ! We greet each 
 other in French and English — French, I mean, as far as 
 the irregular verbs and no farther. But this wayside 
 pause is soon broken, and on we surge for Mushidi's in a 
 
306 THINKING BLACK 
 
 cloud of dust — dust in our eyes, dust in our teeth, and 
 dust all over. And now we are approaching the exciting 
 goal. The distant roar of the capital grows louder and 
 louder, and soon the curse of Babel is upon us, Bunkeya's 
 polyglot negroes roaring out their rival jargons of 
 welcome. But scarcely has Captain Stairs set foot in 
 the capital when Mushidi illogically recoils from his own 
 theory that the name of an Englishman equates the 
 -summum honum. He who knows how many beans 
 make five has more than half surmised the truth when 
 it is too late. A wolf has come in sheep's clothing. 
 What elegant fiction is this ? Why does this Englishman 
 fly a Congo Star ? Why has he Belgians with him ? 
 Why did he intercept the Mushidi missive recalling Sir 
 Alfred Sharpe ? No wonder from that hour of disillusion- 
 ment Mushidi's shrivelled face became an impenetrable 
 mask, the old brain plotting deeply and darkly. But it 
 cannot last long. Four days of skirmishing — diplomatic 
 skirmishing I mean — and then the end. Is it a grim joke 
 this petulant idea of Mushidi's that he wants Stairs to be 
 his "blood" brother? On the 17th the same proposal, 
 " I want you for ' blood ' brother." The 18th ditto — same 
 "blood" brother petulance. The 19th — still he invokes 
 the phantom of " blood " brother. Finally comes the 20th 
 and crack of doom, real red blood this time — and without 
 the brother. It was like this. On the 19th, Stairs had 
 hoisted the Congo Star on the high sugar-loaf hill 
 adjoining Nkulu, the same peak this that had challenged 
 Mushidi's fancy to put an ivory house on the summit : 
 
 
"NEMESIS, DAUGHTER OF NIGHT" 307 
 
 then came the Belgian proclamation in which he was de- 
 barred from ever again shedding blood. But the King 
 has given them the slip, for under cover of night he has 
 gone to Munema, one of his first towns in the country. 
 The Munema where he is soon to die ; the Munema where 
 his first wife, Kapapa, is — a weedy, depressed-looking 
 woman ; the Munema where he began, and where he 
 will end. So Stairs follows the King up. Directing 
 operations from his fortified camp, Captain Bodson and 
 the Marquis de Bonchamps cut across the valley in 
 pursuit, a halt being called at the Munema gate. Four 
 head-men are sent in with an ultimatum, but an hour 
 passes and they return not. Are they dead or are they 
 prisoners ? This brings matters to a head. After parley 
 it is agreed that Captain Bodson enter alone, the body 
 of troops remaining outside with the prearranged signal 
 that they rush in on the first sound of firing. The same 
 Bodson this, remember, prize revolver shot, whose evcr}^ 
 aim is a hit. So in the bold Captain goes — yes, in, never 
 to come out again. Advancing on to the royal palisade, 
 behold ! Mushidi surrounded by a body-guard of his 
 ghillies, and in the centre the four emissaries — prisoners. 
 Bodson, nothing dismayed, comes slowly on, and Mushidi, 
 King to the end, lurches at the intruder with a long 
 sword, then falls stone dead to the Captain's revolver. 
 Now for reprisal. Bang! bang! go the "Tower" guns 
 of Mushidi's body-guard, and poor Bodson falls, mortally 
 wounded, with the dying shout, " I have killed a tiger ! 
 Long live the King ! " The Zanzibaris who rushed in 
 
308 THINKING BLACK 
 
 were so maddened by wliat had taken place that they 
 cut Mushidi's head from its trunk and carried it on a pole 
 back to the camp. 
 
 " Every bullet has its billet," and the death that 
 
 stiffens kings and slaves alike had gripped him. 
 
 " There's no pocket in a shroud," says the proverb, but 
 
 Mushidi didn't get a shroud, much less a pocket in it. 
 
 Thus it came to pass, as so often happens in this old 
 
 world's history, that the man who had spent a lifetime 
 
 laying violent hands on hundreds of innocents must 
 
 himself make exit by the identical doorway of a violent 
 
 death. "I happened," says Dr. Moloney, "to glance at 
 
 the dead man's face. It seemed to wear a mocking smile 
 
 which somehow wasn't easily forgotten." Even in death 
 
 the last look he left on his face was a perfect picture of 
 
 that curious career of his, the wolf and the pig still 
 
 struggling together in the dead features — Satan's 
 
 signature, indeed. Better for him had God's witnesses 
 
 never come to his country than that, having come, he 
 
 should have turned a deaf ear to them, and closed his 
 
 eyes against the light. This Mushidi was emphatically 
 
 a man " wrapped in the solitude of his own originality." 
 
 His head — and he was proud of it — was shaped as I have 
 
 seen no other man's, the bumps towering away like 
 
 Alps on Alps marking him off as one capable of doing 
 
 wild, wicked things. Ever since I have known him, a 
 
 look of cunning craftiness clung to his shrivelled features, 
 
 his general demeanour overbearing and haughty. With 
 
 him it was emphatically Aut Cwsai' aut nullus, every 
 
-NEMESIS, DAUGHTER OF NIGHT " 309 
 
 one in his country laid under tribute to serve him, " He 
 used," says Dr. Moloney, " to call these worthy men, the 
 Missionaries, his ' white slaves,' insult them before the 
 public, and despoil them of their goods." 
 
 Across the Eastern doorway of his empire on the 
 Lualaba, Mushidi had figuratively written the prophecy, 
 "My death will come from the East." All travellers entering 
 from the East were suspect, and the most able diplomatist 
 had a hopeless task before him. Nor did the wily old 
 warrior draw blank here in this death-prophecy of his. 
 Yes, die he did, and from the suspected East the mortal 
 bullet came. All his life he dreaded that East Coast and 
 resented with extreme asperity the advance of any stranger 
 along his old route. Does not the thief who burgles 
 through the pantry window suspect that the policeman 
 will follow by the same aperture ? Little did Mushidi 
 imagine that his own curiously shaped head was destined 
 to make the long journey out to the Ocean preserved in 
 a petroleum tin. A mere instance of the curio craze writ 
 large, the Central African negro thinks that preserved 
 head of Mushidi the cap and climax of it all. For was 
 not this the Mushidi who made his Babylon a vast 
 museum of skulls ? Skulls piled up in pyramids on long 
 tables ; skulls used as drinking-cups for warriors ; skulls 
 hung up like hats on pegs on the lifeless spokes of withered 
 trees. Such a " dramatic neatness " do they see in God's 
 methods that they speak of the dead despot's skull ever 
 " dripping, dripping blood all the long journey to the 
 Ocean." This curious idea of the " blood that never dries " 
 
aiO THINKING BLACK 
 
 sends its roots down into the belief that kingly blood 
 never washes out. Of course, such a wonderful head 
 performed miracles. I remember travelling in the wake 
 of the famous skull of Mushidi, camping at the same spot 
 as the victors. It was here Mushidi's skull performed a 
 supposed miracle, for under the very tree where it was 
 placed for the night, the artful ants worked hard, and 
 simulating a skull they made a perfect mould of the 
 " sacred skull " in the form of an ant-hill ! 
 
 But we are doomed to black, blacker, blackest. Hard 
 on the heels of the Sanga guerilla warfare comes dark 
 famine, just as in the Apocalypse the red horse of the 
 second seal — war — is followed by the black horse of 
 famine. Galloping through the stricken land, like a sort 
 of third seal, " I saw, and behold a black horse — hut he that 
 sat thereo7i had a balance in his hand." Thus, even in 
 sore trial, our God does not leave us desolate, for we see also 
 divine balance where dying natives only see the rushing 
 black horse. (Ay, beyond and above famine, balance, 
 and seals, we see the Loving Lamb Who alone is worthy 
 to open any such seals. And are not we counted worthy 
 to suffer ?) The binder of the Bible, seemingly, is as 
 important a personage as its translator, for my little pocket 
 edition opens automatically at Genesis and Romans. 
 Surely not the binder but the Author does this good thing 
 for me when in trouble, my Bible opening simultaneously 
 at the black side in Genesis xlii. and the bright side in 
 Romans viii. : — 
 
 "All these things are against me" (Gen. xlii. 36). 
 
'' NEMESIS, DAUGHTER OF NIGHT" 311 
 
 "All things work together for good " (Rom. viii. 28). 
 This benighted famine experience is called by the 
 Arabs " seeing the stars in the day-time." Even before 
 Captain Stairs' arrival from the East with his large caravan, 
 the country had been steadily sinking under the indirect 
 pressure the Va Sanga were bringing to bear upon Bunkeya. 
 So much so, that when the new-comers arrived, the tide 
 had gone far, far out in the hemmed-in capital. Food 
 could not be had for the buying, and the natives every- 
 where, hollow as a drum, were eking out an existence on 
 roots, while they watched their corn ripening with loaded 
 guns. Every thief was shot at sight, and even soldiers 
 were bulleted. Thus matters stood, I say, even before 
 Stairs came with his Arabs, and now begins a struggle for 
 existence such as never before happened in these parts. 
 His soldiers turn out to be (what alas, Koran chanters 
 often are) an unscrupulous lot, and loot cruel and whole- 
 sale seems to be the order of the day. The strong come 
 off better than the weak, but the victors fare badly 
 enough ; eighty of their number have died in the capital, 
 jylus seventy dead or missing. As for the poor natives, 
 they are wiped out in hundreds, specially all the old folks, 
 who, hollow eyes unnaturally large and bright with the 
 weird lustre of famine fever, are forced to the wall. Thus 
 Africa reads us the old lesson that having no imports, it 
 can only as a vast continent live one year at a time. The 
 least tampering with the agricultural year means blighting 
 famine : explorers, beware ! 
 
 And how do we live? Here is a subject the very 
 
312 THINKING BLACK 
 
 mention of which, I regret to say, is calculated to disturb 
 the gastric functions of the stomach. Even the Marquis 
 de Bonchamps, from many of whose opinions I disassociate 
 myself, is quite correct here. Escaping for his life to 
 Europe, he arrived August 1892, and declared that for 
 twenty-seven days their expedition had nothing better 
 to live on than locusts, ants, and even grass. This witness 
 is true. In these gnawing days of famine I can tackle 
 grass with famished gusto ; grass seeds boiled to an emerald 
 gruel is a famous food — Musunga wa Chifufia, or sul- 
 phate of copper porridge, the name of this green gruel. 
 
 As an anxious alternative I also eat and enjoy thousands 
 of white ants with ravenous content. The said ants with 
 a good supply of salt make an excellent repast, for being 
 obese little insects they frizzle finely in their own fat. 
 Don't forget that one pinch of salt, though, or you have 
 spoilt it all. One pinch only ? Nay, you need two — a 
 pinch of salt and a pinch of hunger. This, remember, is 
 no laughing matter to a hungry bush preacher, for I find 
 the difference between English plenty and African paucity 
 is the old candid contrast between the relish of a man who 
 likes what he eats and the epicure Englishman who eats 
 what he likes. Another African dainty these days is rats, 
 five little rats tied to each other by their twirling tails and 
 put on the famine market. Snails, too, are a widely eaten 
 commodity long after every mongrel dog has been heard 
 to give his last howl on entering the gaping pot of gaping 
 negroes. These snails are in much demand by Lubans, and 
 a brisk business is done per dozen — decimal dozen, I 
 

 
 . , J J > 
 
 \1 ' 1,' 
 
 BANE AND ANTIDO.TE. 
 A great snake specialist. 
 

 4 
 
-NEMESIS, DAUGHTER OF NIGHT" 313 
 
 mean, for in Africa 12 = 10. Not a question this of the 
 negro hlase palate but rather the pinch of hunger ; senti- 
 mental repugnance loathes a shining and repulsive snail, 
 but its nutritive qualities are exceptionally high. So, too, 
 caterpillars. Not merely when famine stalks the land but 
 tribally, the Luban gloats over these furry little creatures 
 with a polite name. An apologetic African, with that 
 day-in-day-out ache in the pit of the stomach, defended 
 these extremes of diet in the clever retort : "Even in the 
 dark, who ever forgot the road to his mouth ? " This 
 famine, of course, is the metaphoric dark night to 
 him. 
 
 Here is an equally hungry fellow defends his doleful 
 diet of boiled snakes by saying, "A hungry man will 
 even burn his mouth." (The snakes, that is to say, are 
 figuratively scalding food.) But as a matter of fact the 
 Lusato, or boa-constrictor, does taste like delicate veal and 
 is a famous Luban titbit. My friend Chivangwa has a 
 lively collection of snakes of many colours and sizes, and 
 these, kept in gourds, feed on flour and mice pending the 
 gluttonous " snake supper." Every new moon he takes 
 them out for dentistry, and instead of hanging them on 
 a peg he prefers to coil them round his neck. Even 
 antelopes they think inferior eating to snakes. This I 
 found on sending a native back ten miles at sundown to 
 bring on some venison I had killed, but on reaching the 
 spot he drew blank, the antelope non est. Hours after, 
 however, he lurched into camp dumping down some very 
 toothsome-looking steaks in the moonlight, not mine but 
 
314 THINKING BLACK 
 
 some of his own prowess as substitute. His story ran that 
 as he came shambling along on the return journey, lo ! a 
 long boa-constrictor blocking the way. Sprang at it, slew 
 the snake, seriously skinned it, and finally cut up these 
 steaks ; witness, my apologetic messenger in the moon- 
 light offering me snake veal for the lost venison ! 
 
 May I here right an old wrong about boas ? For, 
 albeit the boa-constrictor is a world-word, it is quite 
 certain the glamorous associations of this awful name 
 are wildly astray. By very common consent the boa- 
 constrictor, though ** mother of all snakes," is the most 
 timid of African reptiles, the natives declaring that the 
 mere sight of man so unnerves him that you can go back 
 hours later and still find him dazed and stock still. A 
 mere boy who spies this snake in the bush, before darting 
 off to bring up a man with a spear, resorts to the simple 
 expedient of plucking a spray of leaves and leaving it 
 dangling before the boa's fascinated eyes. 
 
 Not troubling with remoter contingencies, there lies 
 the fascinated snake lost in wonder at that swaying 
 bunch of leaves. Gazing, ever gazing at it with a look 
 that looks whole dictionaries, " the agony of shyness " 
 this is called. Meanwhile, scramble and scrape, the man 
 with the spear is speeding on to a sure victory — sure, 
 that is to say, provided ever and always the reptile's real 
 name is avoided in speech. " Call him not Lusato," say 
 the natives, " call him a coil oj rope, lest you break tlie 
 spell." True, therefore, to this rule, the native who first 
 sighted it in the forest burst in on the villagers to report 
 
"NEMESIS, DAUGHTER OF NIGHT" 315 
 
 the presence of — " a coil of rope," the ladies all remaining 
 to smack their lips and discuss tlic juicy steaks of — "a 
 coil of rope." Does not name equate nature ? Change the 
 former and you transform the latter. 
 
 Locusts, of course, are considered a Central African 
 boon in feast or ftimine, and for all the world like shrimps. 
 One can surely be a good Pauline Missionary and enjoy 
 these, for were not locusts an Athenian luxury of old, and 
 preferred by the Greeks, even to such dainties as succulent 
 quails or best figs ? You can see any day in Africa an 
 exact counterpart of the Nineveh sculpture in the British 
 Museum, for the sight of boys carrying long sticks to 
 which are tied locusts is as common here as it was in 
 Nineveh. 
 
 But, you say, surely the African woods are a well- 
 stocked larder. We certainly find it otherwise, for 
 curiously the vast and dense African forest is a poor 
 refuge in the pinch of famine. Crammed full of poison- 
 ous tubers as it is, very many natives nosing all over the 
 forest have died sad and sudden deaths by experimenting 
 on a new diet. " Touch not the aristocrats " is the dread 
 forest charge to children concerning all poisons in Africa, 
 poisons being called "aristocrats" because you dare not 
 touch them. A good old rule I find workable is the 
 eating of any fruit nibbled at by the monkeys. 
 
 Unlike the organ-grinder's captive on a chain, these 
 forest monkeys are fastidious eaters, and with endless 
 supplies before them, they nibble at fruit, rejecting petu- 
 lantly more than half Besides, as a monkey's mouth is 
 
316 THINKING BLACK 
 
 supremely clean without a tooth-brush, one can eat with 
 serenity his leavings. 
 
 Very much of this, of course, was not by any means 
 the normal Central African dietary, and the dining music 
 was not always to the tune of de profundis. Never- 
 theless, my practical experience of purely native food for 
 more than twenty years all points to its peculiar acclima- 
 tising properties, and it seems in some unarguable sense 
 true that if you wish to be much in Africa, then the said 
 Africa must be much in you. Certainly it is along the 
 lines of an ideal African dietary that the "blackwater" 
 problem will be solved. They challenge all puzzling 
 diseases with the pungent query : " What has the invalid 
 eaten ? " Hence their national saying (an unconscious 
 Irishism) : " Eat one thing, and then you'll know what 
 you have died of ! " Thus when he sees a European dip 
 into so many dift'erent tins, the sage negro says trium- 
 phantly : " That is why you ' whites ' die ofif so easily : we 
 Africans eat only one thing, so we know what kills us." 
 For this is the meaning of that most curious name the 
 white man receives from his negro — Kaminamahiveta. 
 Supposed to be a compliment of the first water, it means 
 " Mr. Tin-Swallower." Thus you see this tin-swallowing 
 by the European is the African's glory, for does it not 
 mean an assured income as a carrier of the terrible tins ? 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 Our Eastern Exodus 
 
"Behold I will do a new thing. ... I will even 
 make a v/ay in the wilderness." Isaiah. 
 
 "Go through, go through the gates: prepare ye 
 the way of the people : cast up, cast up the high- 
 way : gather out the stones : lift up a standard for 
 
 the people." Isaiah. 
 
 " The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, 
 . . . Make straight in the desert a highway for our 
 God." Isaiah. 
 
 J>8 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 Our Eastern Exodus 
 
 J jy HEREIN the reader ^ following 
 the manner and method of J^oses^ 
 pitches his tent towards the sunrising. 
 
 THE scene now changes to the East of the Lufira, for 
 Babylon is fallen, Mushidi dead and done with. 
 And as the hart panteth after the water-brooks so 
 we abhor the old muddy wells of Bunkeya and break away 
 East to the far-flowing Lufira. The slaves long ago took 
 the bit in their teeth and ran off on their own ; now, all 
 alone we must make a fresh start on fresh soil, and round 
 our cluster of huts the future great population will gather. 
 Lofoi Valley is our first choice of a site, the Belgian fort 
 being two miles down stream from our Mission camp.^ 
 At first blush, this proximity of Christ and Csesar does not 
 seem prudential enough, yet this of all things is the 
 country's greatest need. Foreigners though they are, 
 Government under any flag is the crying desideratum of 
 
 1 The subsequent history of this venture is interesting. Mr. Campbell 
 came down from Mweru with Mr. George and began at Mwena. Then Mr. 
 Clarke came from the West, and he and Mr. Higgins branched off to start 
 the splendid Koni station. Then Mr. Anton ; the final phase being Mr. 
 Last, beginning at Bunkeya, and Mr. Zentler near Kavamba Lake. 
 
320 THINKING BLACK 
 
 the moment. Far from treating these Belgian new-comers 
 to a cold, hostile stare, we rallied round their ensign and 
 wheedled all sorts of negroes into a loyalty that has stood 
 the stress of years. When there was no king in Israel 
 every one did that which was right in his own eyes, and a 
 like anarchy menaces us. Granted years of grinding 
 autocracy and, be sure of it, the day the political pendulum 
 begins to move it will go full swing to anarchy : apres 
 moi le deluge. 
 
 So off we trek East for the new start with many a 
 haunting memory of the Buukeya charnel-house. Our 
 backward look at the dark den is full of sad regret that 
 there we had been hammering away at the iron gates of 
 Mansoul and never a surrender. Fishing, however, is 
 Christ's own simile of this business of saving souls, and 
 our farewell was as cheerless as that of the man who from 
 dawn to dusk of a wintry day has fished a cold Scotch loch 
 with never a nibble. Yet watch again the " dramatic 
 neatness of God's methods," and how at eventide it can 
 be light. Just then, in a brown study that was almost 
 black, God gave me my first soul, a wild man of blood 
 who had been an executioner in the old days. Smish was 
 his name, the same in after years who became an honest 
 elder and won two other elders. The sun is westering, 
 and Mr. Lane and I have said good-bye to the doomed 
 Babylon, of which place it was legally true that a Garen- 
 ganze man could not die outside it. Stupidly, I had 
 lingered too long at my good-byeing, and was in fact lost 
 in one of the too many roads leading out from the capital, 
 
On the Lualaba. 
 
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 v-^^i'-vr- 
 
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OUR EASTERN EXODUS 321 
 
 when a voice reached me in warning. Was in no humour 
 to bandy explanations with any one, but here comes a man 
 out of the grass — our dear Smish of the future, who shows 
 me the way. So ojQF we go together, never to separate ; 
 this whole initial adventure being the parable of our 
 friendship in the future. Right away on that road I paid 
 him back in kind and showed him, the lost executioner, a 
 way he did not know. Now he knows it better than any 
 of us. - Son of Belial though he was, I soon found that for 
 a native he had a delicate and scrupulous sense of honour. 
 Listened to the Gospel gingerly and with tight-shut lips ; 
 no eflfusive reply but rather a constrained look of reflection. 
 And then came salvation for even such as he— from mean- 
 ness to nobleness, from limitation to enlargement. Smish 
 was his name, but "Gad" it should have been, for after 
 him " a troop cometh." Conceive how the old men of the 
 land looked aghast at the temerity of the young genera- 
 tion daring to link their lot with " strangers," this very 
 word {Veni) meaning "the folks you don't know where 
 they come from." " No," said Smish, " but 1 know where 
 these strangers are going to, and I am going with them." 
 So here comes the cleavage between the old generation 
 and the young, between the " hitherto's " and the " hence- 
 forward's." The former all eyes to the rear, adoring the 
 past, sighing for the might-have-been's ; the latter looking 
 forward, alert and surmising, " 'Tis better on before." 
 " Last words are lasting ones," and his dying prayer as he 
 lifted up his eyes to Heaven, death dews on forehead, was, 
 "Father, my journey is done — I come." 
 
 20 
 
322 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Nestling at the foot of the Great Range, here it is on 
 
 the Lofoi River we cradle the Lufira Valley Mission. But 
 
 it seems a cardinal defect of this place is a tendency to be 
 
 drowned like a rat. Only the other day we groaned (or 
 
 growled?) in the capital as we bought a few drops of 
 
 water ; now here is this feast-or-famine Africa giving us 
 
 too much. The other night we were all in our first sleep 
 
 when the great boom of on-coming torrent broke on the 
 
 out-lying hamlets, and then comes a stampede from all 
 
 directions to us in the centre. For we are known to be 
 
 on the highest spot in the vicinity. There is, however, 
 
 such impetuosity in the rush of the dark devastating 
 
 waters that it becomes quickly evident we were all far too 
 
 low, so the next thing is to rush for the nearest trees and 
 
 ant-hills. In this stampede mothers lose sight of husbands 
 
 and little ones, and those separated keep up a wild-beast 
 
 howling to one another in the pitch dark from their 
 
 different perches. No time for looking after mere material 
 
 belongings, as in a case of water slowly rising upon 
 
 us — nothing heard but that booming coming down 
 
 the valley, above which were the shrieks, "Water! 
 
 Water! Fly! Death has come!" The shrieking soon 
 
 subsided into a brave acceptance of this that means 
 
 to them so much of desolation, destitution, and death, 
 
 for as the waters have already risen waist-deep in 
 
 ten minutes, there is no knowing where it will stop. 
 
 Shivering round a smoking and flickerless fire of green 
 
 wood, there they stand on ant-hills — ant-hills we had 
 
 always thought only a blight on the beautiful valley 
 
OUR EASTERN EXODUS 323 
 
 scenery, but now precious life-belts for the whole 
 community. 
 
 Mr. Thompson and I climbed up on the roof of our 
 grass house after rushing about in the water, making 
 more or less futile attempts at salvage work — human 
 life, of course, ranking first — and you are hereby permitted 
 to think of this midnight perch of ours in wet garments 
 as indicating the most miserable night we ever passed. 
 We stick on to the high-pitched roof with pious pertinacity, 
 constantly pinching ourselves into wakefulness, for the 
 tendency to doze is very tempting, but in that event so 
 also is the other tendency to go clear over the edge of the 
 thatch into the flood. A crescent moon rose about one 
 o'clock, lighting up a scene as bleak-looking as it was 
 cold and miserable : our little Mission settlement wholly 
 under water, only the tops of banana trees appearing to 
 mark the paths. And not only our special spot, so flood- 
 proof as we thought it, but the whole country, as far as 
 the eye can reach, one vast pale stretch of water reflecting 
 the moonlight and looking all the more ghastly on that 
 account w^hen we thought of the hamlets submerged and 
 tragedies enacted in the darkness. The longest night I 
 ever spent in my life was on that roof-top watching for 
 the day, and never was sound so welcome as the first 
 shrill clarion of a surviving cock on a tree branch. Then 
 when the Eastern sky grew red, and finally the sun rose 
 to answer all our questionings begotten in the darkness, 
 we were speechless, for here was a great lake — Mweru, some 
 called it who were born there. Look ! glistening red in 
 
324 THINKING BLACK 
 
 the rising sun, whole herds of antelopes crowding each 
 other off the ant-hills, each paltry peak their true Mount 
 Ararat in the deluge. See, too, the swimming snakes 
 darting about, heads erect and fangs menacing. Add to 
 this a thousand rats drowned and drowning. The crocodiles, 
 too, have leaped the banks and are wallowing in new 
 fishing-ground. Fancy an oily crocodile with unconquerable 
 levity sailing in triumph into your submerged kitchen ! 
 He does not need to cook to eat, albeit he has come to eat 
 the cook. It took three days for the waters to assuage, 
 and for more than a week everywhere we moved was 
 through sinking quagmire. On venturing into our houses 
 again to get a notion of the damage sustained, the awful 
 smell of decomposing food, etc., drove us back. To in- 
 ventory the losses is impossible, and after searching in 
 vain a reasonable time for anything once possessed you 
 give it up and reckon it among antediluvian possessions 
 and memories. 
 
 But again, let us ask the question : Is this proximity 
 of Fort and Mission prudential ? Now, here it may not 
 be amiss to suggest that the particular peril of most 
 Missions in Africa is the tendency of Government and 
 Mission to go their own ways, seeking as wide a berth 
 as possible. But this amounts ultimately to a peril, for 
 only with the civil power keeping a Mission in its proper 
 place can the latter be stripped of its false prestige. 
 Many a little Protestant Pope in the lonely bush is forced 
 by his self-imposed isolation to be prophet, priest, and 
 king rolled into one — really a very big duck he, in his 
 
 i 
 
OUR EASTERN EXODUS 825 
 
 own private pond. Csesar was not the only man who 
 said he would rather be first in a village than second in 
 Kome. Quite seriously he is forced to be a bit of a 
 policeman, muddled up in matters not even remotely 
 in his sphere. Now only this pinch of isolation forces 
 such an one to act oddly, for many a godly man has 
 blushed an ex postjacto regret at actions more judicial 
 than judicious. To call this provocative policy of isolation 
 " potential popery " seems too strong an epithet, but a 
 glance at Cardinal Manning's Origin of the Temporal 
 Power of the Pope is decisive. If my memory does not 
 trick me, I think you will find Manning traces this 
 pestilential pretension to just such a simple source, for 
 when, oh, when was the Bishop of Rome trapped into 
 all the toils and terrors of the Temporal Power ? Why, 
 surely after the fall of Romulus Augustulus, in the absence 
 of imperial rulers in Rome, the primitive Shepherd of 
 Souls was forced (?) into ruling with the rod, the significant 
 end thereof being a triple crown. Quoth Luther, " I am 
 more afraid of my own heart than of the Pope and all the 
 Cardinals. I have within me the great Pope Self"; to 
 which we say " Bravo ! " for well-beloved Martin. 
 * * * 
 
 Here come curious complications, and I a Missionary 
 am compelled to become a Commandant. It is a fine 
 saying and true that a shoemaker should stick to his 
 last ; how much more the Missionary and his non-meddling 
 in politics ? Yet all this, in Africa, though trite enough 
 to be a platitude and logical enough to be an axiom, 
 
326 THINKING BLACK 
 
 is easier to talk than live. Did not poor Pilkington up 
 North die with a rifle in his hand repressing revolt? 
 Did not Livingstone wear a Consul's hat? Eemember, 
 here in the bush you have no parading policeman who 
 runs to your call ; no clean-cut institutions of civilisation 
 where each official is seriously saddled with responsibility. 
 Unlikely things can happen, and at this point the most 
 unlikely of all falls to my lot. Hard by our Mission camp 
 on the Lofoi, the Belgians have built their Fort, the whole 
 garrison consisting of a picked band of English Haussas 
 and Dahomey men. But on the East the Arabs are 
 hemming us in, so unless the Government makes an ag- 
 gressive sortie as far out as Lake Mweru, these Arabs will 
 certainly construe silence as supineness and be on us like 
 a bolt. What's to be done ? These are the days when 
 the solidarity of the white race swamps petty national 
 distinctions. Did not Julius Csesar say that on crossing 
 over to England he found the inhabitants of that island 
 called Belgw ? Why should not these Belgians now have 
 their revenge ? 
 
 Unlike Caesar, who encountered people called Belgse 
 in territory called Britain, these Belgians have found 
 people called British in territory called Belgian. Witness, 
 then, the curious sequel. In the dead of night Captains 
 Brasseur and Verdickt sit down and write their last 
 will and testament (poor Brasseur was killed in the 
 second Arab sortie), and ofi" they start towards the East, 
 leaving me a poor half-and-half creature indeed : acting 
 Commandant of the Fort with my soldiers to drill and at 
 
OUR EASTERN EXODUS 327 
 
 the same time God's Missionary to the heathen. The 
 Central African equivalent this to one's next-door 
 neighbour in England shutting up house and leaving 
 you his key with a request to keep your eye on the 
 place. Only in this important instance your neighbour 
 happens to be the local Lord Kitchener, and the Fort 
 and garrison are all thrown on your shoulders — you, 
 a semi-saint, semi-soldier. Such is sad, bad, and mad 
 old Africa, the ex officio Commandant in you tugging 
 one way and the Missionary in the same "' you " tugging the 
 other. The shrill call of the bugle and the soft voice 
 of the evening hymn — what a muddle of memories ! 
 A pile of regulations, all law, law, law ; the pages of 
 the Gospel, all grace, grace, grace. Imprisoning a soldier 
 for insubordination at morning parade, and in the evening, 
 under the diamond stars, preaching deliverance to the 
 captives. The weary suspense, too, of it all. The night 
 alarms besides ; all the superficial feelings on the alert 
 on a moonless night. Then, the uncertainty — would 
 they ever come back, or would the Arabs eat up the 
 column ? Must I defend the Fort to my last cartridge ? 
 All these thoughts come to me with the impact of a 
 blow, the man within the man fighting the man outside 
 the man, Missionary versus Commandant. Although 
 I did two years' soldiering in Scotland, be sure of it, 
 there is uttered much ungrammatical and unmilitary 
 nonsense in the shape of orders. My corporal, however, 
 is a Haussa gem and saves me much trouble. So 
 eminently and unaff"ectedly a gentleman, I can trust 
 
328 THINKING BLACK 
 
 him on lonely night duty, our common bond of English- 
 manship being his choicest consolation. Always scrupu- 
 lously dressed in navy knickers, red turkey twill, and 
 fez, he often tells me that he has resolved to die as 
 artistically as a regard for a clean uniform will allow. 
 The Arabs, moreover, are his co-religionists, and if taken 
 he prefers death at their hands — at any rate, they kill 
 you neatly and thoroughly with a knife. The maddening 
 rumours, too, are as dangerous as dubious, for my native 
 scouts vie with each other in running silly screeds off 
 the reel. Even granting a germinal grain of truth in 
 these rumours, the said grain grows luxuriantly in the 
 fertile soil of a black brain, and putting two and two 
 together they always make six. 
 
 Making allowance, however, for the wear and tear 
 of language, I guessed successfully some of the happenings 
 over the mountains. The twenty men reported as 
 court-martialed and shot turned out to be only a chief 
 executed in error. The annihilation of the column — 
 a terrible contingency for me — merely meant a sharp 
 repulse, demi-defeat call it. So the weary days wear 
 on, until my nerves are almost worn to a thread. The 
 great black wall of the range stretches North with the 
 vast savannah rolling miles below. How natural for 
 the mind to leap those mountains, then on, on to the 
 Lualaba ; on yet farther to Tanganyika ; up now to 
 the Nile and down to Khartoum where Gordon, orreat 
 lonely soul, fell so nobly. Certainly, he it was who 
 wrote the words that have become my pillow of peace, 
 
OUR EASTERN EXODUS 329 
 
 his valediction to all weary outposts. Almost the last 
 line he ever wrote : " The hosts are with me, Mahauaim." 
 For if it be good Hebrew to translate this word as the " two 
 hosts," then surety it is better to translate the mere words 
 into the worshipping belief that my little garrison in the 
 Lofoi Fort is encircled by the same shining legions of light. 
 But what's that ? Ay, what is it ? A yell growing 
 louder and louder, and craning my neck on the bastion 
 I can spy the sleeping Haussa quarters vomiting out long 
 strings of yelling women, the absent soldiers' wives these 
 who can bear the suspense no longer. All night they have 
 debated the fortunes of war ; for ten hours they have 
 wrangled over an ugly rumour down from the hills, and 
 sit still any longer they cannot. A huge Amazon leads 
 them in a wild war-dance, and lining out four abreast, 
 club in hand, they start at the double round the Fort, 
 roaring out a taunt-song against the Arabs. Round they 
 go, once, twice, thrice, roaring out their wrath in song ; 
 every yell supposed to energise their absent husbands 
 and win the victory — cataracts of vituperation, torrents 
 of curses ! They cannot pray, and they have gulped 
 down their anger too long ; now for the solemn institution 
 of this early morning " curse "-meeting when they dance 
 the Devil's wild fandango. Nearly naked and wholly 
 wild, the flap, flap of their pendant dugs is made to 
 rhyme with the thud of their feet and the flourish of 
 the clubs. Then having encompassed the walls of their 
 imaginary Jericho three times, ofl" the Amazons rush to 
 the river for morning bath, splashing among the crocodiles 
 
330 THINKING BLACK 
 
 with never a twinge of fear. The Devil's matins these 
 became, my morning hymn drowned by their morning 
 curses. Glad was I when, one day, far up the hills I 
 heard the bugle of the retreating column, and in an hour 
 they filed past to relieve me of corroding care. 
 
 But here, as elsewhere, the loyal law of compensation 
 avails. Distasteful business this soldiering was for a 
 Missionary, yet even here I get my royal revenge. For 
 years afterwards I was permitted to chaplain these 
 troops, many of whom were my old soldiers. A wild 
 lot they were : cannibals, hundreds of them, who 
 subsequently revolted and murdered their white officers. 
 When Baron Dhanis, the Belgian Commandant (an old 
 Greenock boy, like myself) broke the back of the Arab 
 domination, he little dreamed what a defeat he organised 
 out of his victory, by permitting the crass crime of 
 "converting" these cannibals into the soldiers of a 
 civilised state. In delusion and confusion he caused 
 these old Arab cut-throats to be enrolled en masse, 
 the veneer of the barracks, smart uniform and deadly 
 Albinis only helping to hide the horrible man-eater 
 wrapped up in this official envelope. Conversion, for- 
 sooth, this was called, as though the wolf in sheep's 
 clothing has lost the old appetite for mutton. No 
 wonder the march of events soon swept dozens of 
 young Belgians into the cannibal pots : Leroy, Inver 
 Mellen, Andriane, Louis Dhanis, and many others.^ 
 
 ^ The subsequent regime by Governor Wangerni(^e and his successor 
 was a true triumph of sane, solid methods. Bravo ! Belgium. 
 
OUR EASTERN EXODUS 331 
 
 The same grotesque contradiction could be seen when 
 Baron Dhanis surprised and beat the Arab auxiliaries at 
 the town of a cannibal cut-throat, by name Bantubenge. 
 "He of the crowds" this coo-uomen means, and seldom 
 have name and nature reflected each other so well. For 
 crowds there were. Now, the Arabs were bad, but here 
 is a brute who dines daily on " black beef," yet this is the 
 very man to whose tender mercies the Baron handed over 
 " hundreds " of young children ranging in tender years 
 from two to seven, and even ten. Nearly all belonging to 
 Kitalo, Dhanis committed the unprecedented error of 
 trusting such a demon with the custody of these lost 
 lambs. Bantubenge — ugh ! — whose name denotes death. 
 In a few days they were all dead, sold for a piece of 
 handkerchief to his hungry cannibals. Not dozens of 
 children but hundreds, for the Baron's own words are : 
 " Des centaines de jeunes enfants de 2 a 7 et m^me 10 ans." 
 This was the famous victory of the 5 th May, but all these 
 poor innocents delivered (?) from the joug Ardbe would 
 have been far safer with their old masters. In other 
 words, and without euphemism, the terrible truth is that 
 when these Belgians took such cannibals under their wing 
 as auxiliaries, cannibalism became a thriving semi- 
 official concern. They even condoned their eating of their 
 own black fathers and mothers. One instance of this 
 happened during the attack on Gongo-Lutete by a man 
 from Pania. Stationed as guard, he shot a man in the 
 dark and came in to report. In the interval the body 
 was brought in, and what was the guard's surprise to 
 
332 THINKING BLACK 
 
 find that he had killed his own father, "the author of 
 his days." Now, although the Commandant gave 
 orders for decent burial, what did the son do but pass 
 alono; the remains to his comrades for consumption ! 
 Tribal taboo forbade him the meal, but he could connive 
 at his own father's disappearance in the pots. The 
 volunteer drummer of this expedition fared no better. 
 He disappeared, and some conjectured that he had been 
 killed by a lurking foe. Not at all. A day or two later 
 he — all digestive apparatus and no conscience — was dis- 
 covered dead in a hut by the side of a half-consumed 
 corpse. Had eaten neither wisely nor well — dined him- 
 self to death, in fact. 
 
 Only a week later, a young Batetela, not more than 
 fourteen years of age, came up to the Baron's tent when 
 he was dining and borrowed his knife. No sooner the 
 possessor of his weapon, he slipped round the tent, cut the 
 throat of a little girl, three or four years old, who belonged to 
 him, and proceeded to cook her. Put on the chain as he 
 was, this punishment was neither adequate nor exemplary, 
 for soon a number of children began to disappear in the 
 district. Caught again, this time they found him with a 
 bag hanging round his neck and the leg and arm of a young 
 innocent. He was shot. No wonder many of these 
 liberated prisoners felt they had really fallen out of 
 the Arab frying-pan into the roasting-fire of, so-called, 
 liberation. " Prisoners of war " they were called, most of 
 them poor naked nobodies, the sport of each new political 
 move in the country. The " nether millstone " class is 
 
OUR EASTERN EXODUS 333 
 
 their title, because tliey get all the crushing. Your big 
 Chief escapes in Africa, and so do the negro gentry, only 
 the scum of heathendom left to bear the pangs of imprison- 
 ment. Let them make a try for liberty and see what 
 befalls them. A band of these miserables rushed off one 
 day, hoping to break through to their old homes. 
 "Deserters," they were called, and followed up; but on 
 asking the local Chief which way they had passed, he 
 pointed eloquently to his mouth and smacked his lips 
 in a way that told the whole story. They had all been 
 eaten save one, and he an old boy of Hinde's. 
 
 More revoltes man-eating. Rapidly incriminating 
 evidence is very soon forthcoming on this marrow-freezing 
 theme. Here, at my feet, is a young lad, Lumba, his 
 story at sunset appropriately set off against a blood -red 
 sky. Parting carefully his clotted hair, he discloses an 
 ugly hole in his skull, the dig this from a cannibal axe. 
 As serious as mathematics he makes a careful count of 
 the living and the dead, and quite eighty of his friends 
 were cooked and eaten before his eyes — licked clean up, 
 bones and gravy. Very young as he was, these blatant 
 cannibals offered him his life on condition that he would 
 eat his own brother, and twice the laddie shut his little 
 jaws like a rat-trap and snapped refusal. This vile perse- 
 cution ran on into two days, and if Monday saw him 
 treated to whips, Tuesday was certainly reserved for their 
 scorpions. Finally, making a wild dash for freedom, 
 clean over the pot of his boiling brother, he sprang into 
 the bush, the cannibal guard sending an axe whizzing 
 
834 THINKING BLACK 
 
 into his skull — the axe, forsooth, that was red with his 
 own brother's blood now drinking his. Yet still he ran 
 on for dear life, a large ant-bear hole ultimately affording 
 a very inviting shelter from the hue-and-cry in the forest. 
 And next day he awoke from a long swoon the proud 
 possessor of the axe that split his skull — but could also 
 split firewood for a needful forest fire ! 
 
 Enough of horrors, do you say ? Well, yes ; but you 
 cannot give an idea of Lubaland without alluding to 
 them — and I can only hint and indicate. To make 
 hideousness more hideous, witness a man, Lukatula by 
 name — history will spue out his name with disgust ! 
 — one of the Belgian revoltes. Supreme he among 
 the children of Cain. All around Kavamba Lake he 
 had it noised that the white men were a low lot 
 because they ate fowls, for what was the domestic fowl 
 but the village scavenger ? Only human flesh was worth 
 eating, for was it not true that only man was careful of 
 what he ate ? As, therefore, man alone is careful of what 
 he eats, the argument ran that man should be careful to 
 eat man. Pharisee to the last drop of blood in him, here 
 was a serious sickener — human flesh the only pure food of 
 the race ! For long weary months this diabolic epicure 
 had his scouts out, catching strings of little boys and 
 girls, all doomed to the pot, all reckoned titbits ! Figures 
 are, I know too well, very tricky things in Africa, but it 
 seems sure that the climax of all these uncanny realities 
 was reached here in this sad Lubaland when Lukatula 
 shut two hundred souls in a house and roasted them 
 
OUR EASTERN EXODUS 335 
 
 alive. An eerie, weird, and awful business to reflect 
 on, liere you have cannibalism in full flower and blooming 
 in torture — two hundred men, women, and children 
 penned up in a mud house, the terrible thatched roof 
 sent roaring up in flames. But surely, you suggest, a 
 feeling of shame shot hotly through the murderer as he 
 beheld these two hundred Lubans in articulo mortis ? 
 The obvious answer is that what, to us, is a nightmare 
 and tragedy is to him something far diff'erent — a whifi" 
 of roasting viands from the Devil's kitchen, nothing more. 
 Quite civilised in his way, this man's favourite plate is 
 appropriately an enamel soup-dish from the West Coast, 
 centred with the King of Portugal's crown, and encircled 
 by the Portuguese colours. A reeking mackintosh his 
 fashionable garment under vertical rays, over which he 
 slings a very horsy pair of field-glasses. Granted (and 
 gladly) this was a very special blaze of barbarity, specially 
 wanton I mean, what was the cause ? Merely the shaving 
 of the cannibal's head after a long spell of letting his hair 
 grow long. Month after month had passed and Luka- 
 tula's fast - grizzling wool was ominously allowed to 
 grow unchecked, dark hints thrown out that the day of 
 his head-shaving would be '* the day of many tears." 
 And come it did, that close shave of his head being 
 equivalent to a closer shave to many whose lives that 
 day were in jeopardy. 
 
 Here in September you have white African winter, 
 but it is the whiteness of electric light and as hot as an 
 engine-room. Compared with Africa our English shiver- 
 
336 THINKING BLACK 
 
 ing summer is not summer at all, it is only Ricliter's 
 " winter painted green." A woman, Mrs. Horns, tells me 
 that farther North she went with her sister to take the 
 village tribute to the Chief Chofwe, and they slept two 
 nights in the district capital. Chofwe sent along to their 
 quarters and regretted his not having a fat goat to send 
 them for the cooking-pot : was therefore compelled to 
 send them, with apologies, a shivering naked boy — as 
 substitute for soup ! Here it is this lady Masengo presses 
 a point to the honour of negro womankind ; insists that 
 no woman ever did eat human flesh, that the men only 
 do so, that a woman defies any man to bring " man-meat" 
 into her house, and that all her household pots are in- 
 violate. This witness is true. The rule is that the 
 cannibal club resort to the dark "groves" (Mushitu), and 
 there they keep a special supply of large pots for their 
 revels. The town ladies are jealous of it all, and insist 
 that these men are unclean until the village priest cere- 
 moniously cleanses them after " the red mania." This 
 means that blocking the path of their return to the towm 
 is the purging process by wdiich alone the man " unclean 
 by a dead body " can enter his own house. Indeed, priest 
 or no priest, many a wife sues at law many a husband for 
 his man-eating orgies, any stroke of bad luck in her house 
 being traceable to the dead man eaten by her husband. 
 ** The dead do not really die," say they. But no sigh of 
 sorrow, mark you. It is all No. 1, and a fear that the 
 dead man will haunt the livinor to his undoino;. 
 
 Another aspect of cannibalism. All Lubans are not 
 
OUR EASTERN EXODUS 337 
 
 as brave in initiative as the lion and the leopard, and 
 hence the institution of the cannibal vampire, the human 
 hyenas who feed upon the dead. These are the cowards 
 of the cult who prowl among the tombs. Up here in the 
 Butembo forest you have a weird old man living in the 
 woods, a solitary and cynic, the human steaks hanging in 
 the smoke of his faggot-fire. This old vampire once upon a 
 time played the lion, and killed brother-man as fair prey, 
 but now he has descended in the scale : prowess all gone, 
 a vampire hyena, nothing more. Other cannibals eat the 
 produce of their own vine and fig-tree caught in fair fight, 
 but this old vampire can only haunt the dead. These 
 tomb-haunters are curious in one respect. They, too, 
 sing a dirge of exhumation, a curiously perverse song like 
 the perversity of their "owl-deed" (sic). The idea in 
 this dirge is a conciliating of the supposed dead man's 
 resentment at being so disturbed in his sleep of death. 
 This dirge is uttered in the moonlight with a sepulchral 
 whine, and runs — 
 
 " Va Jika mu Kanwa 
 Panshi va tina Mwashi," 
 
 " We rescue thee, corpse, from the cold wet ground, and 
 honour thee with mouth-interment." 
 
 An old friend of mine, the Chief Swiva, had a creeping 
 experience of this song, and was once very nearly cut up 
 in error by these very vampires, all l^ecause he feigned to 
 be dead. You doubtless demur and ask why any reputal>le 
 man could, should, or would pretend to be dead ; but 
 
 21 
 
338 THINKING BLACK 
 
 that is where this too true story comes in. The facts are 
 demonstrable data, " chiels that winna ding," and thus 
 they run. The village of this Chief Swiva had the mis- 
 fortune to lie on the trunk road, and was thus much 
 harassed by passing Government caravans plundering his 
 people. Of course, in those days, before the splendid 
 Wangermde regime, very many of the State soldiers were 
 frank cannibals who would travel with a smoked human arm 
 or the like tied to their load — Katondo, for instance, did so 
 at Muntemune and to my knowledge. Thus the endless 
 rebuffs and indignities from such a horde of brutes made 
 Swiva long to lata dimo, as he put it, i.e. to die and be 
 done with it. But suicide is an unworthy death for a 
 chief, and the negro is a creature of monkey expedients, 
 so he slowly matures a plan. Why not a mock funeral ? 
 Why not sham sickness and death and burial ? Do not all 
 the local spiders, dor beetles and genus Elater, feign death 
 like a fox when touched ? Thus the weary months pass, and 
 finally poor old Swiva sees no hope of peace ahead save in 
 simulating death. This he resolves to do, and one daring 
 day the false death-wail goes up at midnight ; a wail 
 this ostentatiously prolonged throughout the next day. 
 Visitors pass in and out of the village bemoaning a 
 faithful friend departed, and there, in the dark mud hut, 
 swathed in his sham shroud, lies the malingering old 
 Swiva, heaving gently to the systole and diastole of a 
 hard but sad old heart. (The King is dead, ye negroes 
 not in The Know, yet long live the King !) But the 
 fiasco of it all is now about to be made manifest, for far 
 
OUR EASTERN EXODUS 339 
 
 along the road comes the well-known yell of advancing 
 soldiers : a yell this that stabs Swiva to the bone and 
 makes the shamming corpse lie as still as the real thing. 
 And now they pour into the bereaved (?) village, the 
 cannibal song drowning the mock death-wail — what 
 next? The dance begins outside the Chiefs house, a 
 dance jigged to a vampire song telling of the singer's 
 deadly intent. Be assured, my reader, that whenever 
 the double entente of that dark song reached poor 
 Swiva's ears, as he lay, tied up like a mummy in six mats, 
 he wished he were really dead, and not shamming it. 
 But Swiva is a man of sixty summers, and there lies the 
 wily old Chief motionless, still hoping against hope that the 
 wild protestations of his own people outside will restrain 
 the cannibals from making a sorry supper off his body. 
 Ah, now it is the song he so often laughed over begins 
 to be crooned over his own creeping flesh. 
 
 " We rescue thee," crooned the dirge, " corpse, 
 from the cold wet ground, and honour thee with mouth- 
 interment." 
 
 What happens ? Poor old hypothetically dead Swiva 
 through a chink in his mummy-wrappings sees the gleam 
 
 of a knife, and nay, not one word more dare I add. 
 
 Sufficient if I hereby officially inform you that all the 
 smothered wrongs and amenities of a down-trodden Chief 
 were uttered in that one rending shriek of Swiva. In 
 scorn, he tore the trappings of the grave from him, and 
 in deadly fear the cannibals tore out of the Chiefs hut. 
 Needless to say, as from the dead, he did there and then 
 
340 THINKING BLACK 
 
 arise a model Chief, with a new-born dignity that would 
 brook no nonsense. Ever since his day of simulated 
 death Chief Swiva, in fact, has been very much alive. 
 
 Where are we, then ? What are your cannibal's latent 
 ideas of things ? Or is this man-eating merely a vulgar 
 expedient to satisfy the qualms of hunger ? Here is a 
 cannibal at my elbow who will tell us all. When I ask 
 him about Budianane (the technical term this), he tem- 
 porises, of course, in the usual cannibal way. However, 
 as he has exactly the look of the cat that has been at the 
 milk, he soon breaks the sorry seal of confession. Now, 
 all that man's story is simply the old bundle of contra- 
 dictions, for the subject of cannibalism halves in two like 
 an orange : on the one hand the greedy omnivora who 
 must have broth ; on the other hand a whole priesthood 
 ritual with human flesh as the buttress idea. All this, of 
 course, is typically African ; for as we saw, see, and shall 
 see, the concrete and abstract are inseparable : " shadowing " 
 each other is the literal idea we see in the Bantu abstract 
 prefix. The coarse concrete side of man-eating, then, is 
 simply the African carrying out the " beast- precedents " 
 to a legitimate conclusion. Granted there are beasts 
 major and beasts minor, but the negro at once schedules 
 liimself down among the caruivora. Is not (he argues) 
 human war merely man the carnivorous shedding blood like 
 tlic lion and leopard ? The big animal gral)s at the 
 little one even as tlie big negro swallows the small one : 
 tbe deduction is therefore inexorable that yon must cat 
 what you kill. Again, and yet again, have 1 heard 
 
OUR EASTERN EXODUS 341 
 
 cannibals taunt non-cannibals with the mere wanton 
 
 killing in war and yet not eating what they kill. This 
 
 taunt is technically embalmed in the phrase, Shika7ii 
 
 Yanyoka = the (wanton) hatred of the snake, the point, 
 
 of course, being that a snake merely spits its virus with 
 
 deadly intent to kill, and not at all with an honest desire 
 
 to dine off the carcass. Hence the great Kansanshi 
 
 cannibal club sings a song in this same strain at their 
 
 revels : but to catch the idea of this cannibal apologia I 
 
 must put the words into the melting-pot and recast the 
 
 song in our own English rhyme : — 
 
 " Other men only kill like the snake. 
 They kill, nota bene, for killing's sake ; 
 The Kansanshi, however, make no mistake. 
 They kill to partake of a human steak." 
 
 Plainly, then, the taunt is obvious, and really amounts 
 to the plea that if people must indulge in the madness of 
 man-slaying, then they should have method in their 
 madness and follow up the man-slaying with man-eating. 
 " To botanise on one's mother's grave " is a poor sarcasm 
 to a cannibal : in Lubaland they make a supper out of it. 
 The idea, then, that genus homo is merely one of the 
 carnivora is deeply actuating them in their gruesome 
 deeds. Yet how wonderfully these folks listen ! Here is 
 a puzzle of an audience, for all seem to enjoy the Gospel 
 of Peace, yet sure am I not one of the crowd enjoys 
 the peace of the Gospel. They swallow the sermon but 
 reject the salvation — problem, to find the reason of this. 
 
342 THINKING BLACK 
 
 After plying them with questions, I find the answer is as 
 old as the days when the common people heard Christ 
 gladly. It is surely this : all other religions under the 
 sun make man seek God ; this Gospel I preach whets their 
 curiosity, because God is seen seeking man. Beyond all 
 doubt there is such a thing as the scientific study of 
 comparative religions, but Christianity is not one of them. 
 There is only one Gospel : there are many religions. 
 ^ '^ ^ 
 
 I gladly drop the curtain on these sorry deeds, and 
 would now proceed to business — the Master's surely — by 
 pointing out that, with this new complication of revolt, 
 our road North is as straitly shut as the road West. 
 We have no alternative but to look East for succour. 
 Yet, even there, the circle of Cain is closing in on us, for 
 what is the East but the Arab headquarters ? We may 
 seek to ignore them, but they never forget us. Indeed, 
 precisely now, with cold, concentrated malice, they are 
 shutting us in from three different points on the Eastern 
 skyline : Muruturutu in the North-East, Shimba due East, 
 and Chiwala moving up from the South-East. Chuckling 
 with glee that their old slaves the rebel Belgian soldiers 
 have voted for slavery, they are now advancing to join 
 hands with the Biheans and wipe us out, the compact, of 
 course, to be sealed in blood — our blood. Thus, North, 
 South, East, and West, the Devil is makhig a bold bid to 
 win back the vast Interior to its old allegiance to slavery, 
 the Arab in particular being bent on having nothing less 
 than a huge dividend-swelling concern. But if the 
 
OUR EASTERN EXODUS 343 
 
 sufferings abound, so too the consolations, and like a 
 whiff of ozone from the Indian Ocean comes the whisper 
 that the British are actually working up into the Interior. 
 How my heart goes pit-a-pat at the news ! One Arab, 
 with a glassy stare, even tells me tremblingly that — 
 news ! news ! — they have already laid siege to Mulozi's 
 stronghold, and if we are in high glee he is in high 
 dudgeon at the tidings. Like a toothless negress, who 
 will never see anything to laugh at, this besieging of 
 their Karonga headquarters is a hard knock at my Arab 
 informant. Who will cash his ivory cheques now, seeing 
 Mulozi his old pawnbroker is nearly bankrupt? The 
 shrinking of the planet is proverbial, and here is another 
 proof of the smallness of our globe. Our whole concern 
 now is how to successfully wriggle out East by crossing 
 the Arab lines and, suh silentio, join hands with our own 
 British kin. The problem of route, however, is a minor one 
 compared with the problem of secrecy, for in Africa a 
 mere glance is like proclaiming everything at Charing 
 Cross. ' With this triumphant reactionary majority 
 hemming us in, the stern demand is to be as secret as 
 the grave, for in Africa three can keep a secret only when 
 two of them are dead. So, too, with any new venture such 
 as this projected breaking through to the East, for every 
 three conspirators you can always reckon on four spies. 
 
 Therefore, on the native jDrinciple of " not setting your 
 snare while the partridges are looking on," I slip off 
 towards the East like a thief in the night, the outline of a 
 plan dawning hazily on my mind. All my movements 
 
344 THINKING BLACK 
 
 are necessarily of the non-committal kind. Yonder, 
 across the Lufira Flats are the red ramparts of Kunde- 
 lungu. There the Lord maketh you to ride on the high 
 places of the earth, a great unbroken wall of uniform 
 height lying athwart the Eastern trail as far as the eye 
 can reach. Beyond that tableland is Kavanga, " the 
 Eternal Gates of the Morning," the Africa of the Great 
 Lakes and our own English kinsmen. Why should not 
 the West join hands with the East ? And this is how we 
 do it. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 Boring out East 
 
"As far as the East is from the West" 
 
 *' They pitched their tents towards the sun-rising." 
 
 "O, the little birds sang East, and the little birds 
 
 sang West; 
 And I smiled to think God's goodness flows around 
 
 our incompleteness — 
 Round our restlessness, His rest." 
 
 '♦AH these things 
 are against me." 
 
 Gen. xlii. 36. 
 
 "All things work 
 together for good." 
 
 Rom. viii. 28. 
 
 346 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 Boring out East 
 
 J J /^ HEREIN, Mushidi being dead 
 and done with, the ■perilous pro- 
 cess begins called ^''boring out.'' 
 
 nyTEARING this plateau wall, the blue blur sharpens 
 V into bold black lines, and you soon find it swerv- 
 ing from a straight N. and S. course to form 
 many a large " dream" valley down which roars an angry 
 torrent from the watershed. "Box canons" all of them, 
 and shaped like a U, with occasionally a sharp-shaped V. 
 The river long ago dug out these ravines and is now 
 wriggling down the middle like an S. Hamlets crouching 
 in the reeds on either side of the river-bed dot these 
 valleys sparsely, the people all high-strung and excited. 
 Mugavi, a nervous little quicksilver man, is very kind as 
 we pass through his place, and there is a curious loadstone 
 of affinity when black and white thus defeat Babel by 
 chatting in a common lingo. You seem to walk straight 
 into each other's hearts. To be tongue-tied as to the 
 negro's language means that an unnavigable ocean washes 
 between your two souls, cutting you off from converse : 
 
 Si7 
 
348 THINKING BLACK 
 
 was it not when Paul spoke to the mob in their own 
 Hebrew tongue, " they kept the more silence " ? The 
 women are nearly naked, and seemingly not at all 
 troubled with the European quibble of frocks and frills. 
 One dowager, who queened the town, beat them all, but 
 she only attained to short ballet-dancer's skirts of skin. 
 
 Here is a Nimrod chief, a man of muscle who boasts 
 a good kennel of hunting dogs, the objects of his extreme 
 solicitude. Their trophies are exhibited, from wild boar 
 to roan antelope, and he starves them, paradoxically, to 
 feed their ferocity, not, as he explains apologetically, out 
 of neglect. One of the curious category of upstart 
 " hunter-chiefs " this, the tendency being for even a 
 stripling who has killed his half-dozen elephants to en- 
 trench himself inside a stockade of bamboos. Good shots, 
 all of them, they vulgarise kingship and claim to preside 
 over the destinies of their own hamlet — and the next 
 man's. Meantime the real Lord Paramount sits stony 
 and stern inside his own stockade, plotting young Nim- 
 rod's downfall. 
 
 This chief sends his two sleek young sons with me, 
 •'to see the Great Lake and River": it is their first 
 journey in life, and they are all a-quiver with vanity at the 
 prospect of actually seeing the great unknown East. So 
 there, with the moon hanging overhead like a great Chinese 
 lantern, we have a farewell meeting : all agape, they listen 
 as I sermonise them on the sacred subject of a God who 
 so loves their soul and so hates their sin. On the morrow, 
 in the Kasanga Valley, a large house was struck with 
 
BORING OUT EAST 349 
 
 lightning and several people fell insensible to the ground. 
 The owner of the hut turned up at my meeting and wildly 
 controverted some of the things I was saying on God's 
 love ; describing the lightning incident as " God coming 
 down with red eyes." The old African heresy this, that 
 equates "God" with "wrath" (hukadi). Instead of 
 catching up this negro on a mere technicality, however, I 
 at once conciliated my man by admitting that Nature 
 could, be cold and cruel, but that " herein is Love : not 
 that we loved God (one fraction of a bit), but that He loved 
 us." Across mountain and flood, marsh and meadow, one 
 moaning voice is heard in Africa, " No man hath seen God 
 at any time " : that is all the so-called gospel of Nature 
 can do for the negro. N.B. — Short all these sermons of 
 ours must be, for in Africa if you exhaust your subject 
 you easily exhaust your hearers. " For a running deer, a 
 running shot " is their preacher's proverb on brevity, and 
 in fifteen minutes the sermon should be done— no, not 
 that ; I mean the preacher should be done, for often it 
 takes fifteen years for the fifteen minutes' sermon to 
 be done. 
 
 Curious that these " sons of the mountains " have 
 lightning conductors in the form of a tall bamboo, and 
 their idea is that lightning is not a fluid, but a dragon 
 (Kalumha) ranging the skies, and specially attracted by a 
 bamboo rod. 
 
 The " goatway " as it approaches the Kana rivulet is 
 laid out with such masterly cunning and trickery that you 
 dare not escalade the mountain except in the wake of a 
 
350 THINKING BLACK 
 
 negro who is ''in the know." The Valomotwa can crawl 
 flat on their bellies year in and year out, under the trunks 
 of trees purposely felled to hoodwink strangers. Breaking 
 through grass, they walk backwards and restore each blade 
 to its natural position, defying wit of man to know where 
 they have gone. To-day I chanced on a mountaineer 
 doing this crafty thing, and peeping at him with oblique 
 glances of the eye saw his triumph of trickery. That tell- 
 tale grass he put as softly aside as a surgeon parts the hair 
 to examine a scalp wound, the result being a clever fraud 
 in trail-hiding. Even thus do your troubles multiply, for 
 the local negro is endlessly laying all his plans with con- 
 summate care in order to trap the pioneer. 
 
 But African troubles are like African babies, they grow 
 bigger if you nurse them, and the morning brings counsel. 
 Tumbling out early, you negotiate the Kundelungu wall 
 with the wind whistling through the trees. Most clutch 
 at a faggot from the roaring camp-fire, and up this 
 mountain staircase we wind, the said faggot held off to 
 windward so that the play of the wind sends a tongue of 
 flame licking the bare black body. Anon, and far up the 
 mountain, you hear a triumph " coo ! " from the summit, 
 half taunt, half brag, from a dwarf negro who is first up. 
 The lean, lanky six feet of humanity in front of me laughs 
 at the idea of the dwarf beino^ for once " the tallest man 
 in the caravan " ; and probably our Tom Thumb was right, 
 after all, when he answered their taunts by saying, like 
 Lincoln, "A man's legs ought to be long enough to reach 
 the ground." Breathing as loud as a forge bellows, here 
 
BORING OUT EAST 351 
 
 we are at last on the top, just in time to greet the sun 
 coming up over it at the same time as ourselves, a crisp 
 and cross east wind blowing in our teeth. Rocks, grasses, 
 and trees have all caught the flame of the morning. 
 Yonder, far below, Kasanga Valley lies at our feet, villages 
 looking mere dots on a map, the river a thin thread 
 wandering through an expanse of green and gold. Out 
 through the valley mouth the Lufira Flats stretch away, 
 far, far away to the West, the vast panorama dramatically 
 opening out to its very widest by way of tragic farewell. 
 For this, mark you, means a long "good-bye" to that 
 Western slave-track and the wide waste of lonely land 
 stretching out to the Atlantic. 
 
 Early the next day we reach the Eastern edge, and in 
 order to keep a resolve really to meet the Valomotwa in 
 their own holes, we left the trail in tow of one of the 
 sasrest fjuides I have ever known. I have the honour to 
 appraise you of the fact that we followed this falcon-eyed 
 " path-borer " as meekly as sheep follow their bell-wethers. 
 And the result ? A long day's game at explorer's bo-peep, 
 rolling about among the rocks on the steep brow of the 
 range. Thin saplings cut obliquely, and left half severed, 
 were the unerring guide all along the route, the sort of 
 '" scent " this in a very heathen paper-chase. Without 
 this key to the labyrinth our quest Vv^ould hav^c been 
 hopeless beyond all conjecture, but with it the eye gets 
 accustomed to the arrangement, and we are conducted 
 alons; expectantly from one cut sapling fo anotlier, until 
 noiselessly and suddenly we are really on them, escape 
 
352 THINKING BLACK 
 
 impossible. The men spring for their quivers of hulembe 
 (poison) arrows, opining we are Shimba's Rugarugas, 
 but I approach empty-handed and ask, scoldingly and 
 indignantly enough, what they mean by fleeing incon- 
 tinently from us, their bona fide visitors. As if by magic, 
 their demeanour is now cowed and respectful, as though 
 they realise the game is up ; for here, on the lonely frontiers 
 of the world, could they flee farther or higher ? Later, 
 and they are ashamed of themselves, treating us with real 
 Highland hospitality : we have outwitted their black 
 Vigilance Committee, and the whole visit turns out rather 
 resembling the proverbial month of March — in like a lion, 
 and out like a lamb. Moral : In Africa a storm can clear 
 the air and does not always prophesy bad weather. We 
 were not the predatory creatures of their dreams, and how 
 could I blame them for thus taking refuge in their ' ' muni- 
 tions of rocks," then springing up to eat us, not to greet 
 us ? Did not our own early Britons flee back before the 
 advancing; Saxons and hide themselves in the mountain 
 fastnesses of wild Wales ? 
 
 Another thing. It very soon leaks out that this hamlet 
 we have struck is only one of many — that, in fact, the 
 rocks, like rabbit-warrens, swarm with people, who file in 
 looking daggers and grudging us their secret. 
 
 How is this for a proof that the whole world is kin ? 
 Here, where never white saw black nor black saw white, 
 what did I see to-day ? Two little mountaineers, speaking 
 the pure Gaelic, are in hot and high dispute over some 
 childish matter. " All right, what will you wager ? " asks a 
 
BORING OUT EAST 353 
 
 three-feet-high youngster whose brow is creased in a 
 worried little frown. " I bet three beads," retorts his 
 opponent, and forthwith they link their two little fingers 
 of the right hand solemnly to conclude the Chipikwa, or 
 wager. And all this with the customary placidity of the 
 Epsom racecourse — yes, here at the world's end. To the 
 tramp Missionary it is difficult to say whether one is more 
 harassed or exhilarated in being so startlingly reminded of 
 the solidarity of the race. Is it not the tempter's endless 
 taunt that this negro of ours is too unlike the European 
 even faintly to understand our point ? Yet little do these 
 toy gamblers guess that they are tying themselves up in 
 the same bundle with all the absconding clerks, bank- 
 tellers, cashiers, treasurers, trustees, and speculators who 
 ever put their money on the wrong horse. Reflection : 
 So the old round world is kin after all. 
 
 Gunpowder has never reached these simple folks, and 
 the hunting is all done on tiptoe with silent poisoned 
 arrows. They plead that one bang from a gun would be 
 too tell-tale, booming along the valley. These canons of 
 theirs are whispering galleries, that, with a great awaken- 
 ing clang, echo and re-echo the secret of even the hunter's 
 footfall. As free as a bird, there never was such a thing 
 as game laws, the forest being called Butala tva Leza, or 
 God's larder. The innovation of English game laws would 
 be high treason, for do they not say, " The antelopes were 
 made for man, not man for the antelopes " ? Sure am I a 
 black local parliament would, with the whole force of its 
 judgment and rhetoric, annul all laws against hunting. Err 
 
354 THINKING BLACK 
 
 these negro politicians no doubt would in many pertinent 
 particulars ; bring in a Bill they might, to call winter 
 summer and Friday Tuesday, but as for game laws ! And 
 no wonder, for to the black man of the woods life's 
 limitations are too manifold to admit of such a serious 
 restriction as venison. The negro cup is small, so let him 
 fill it to the brim. And here, once again, around the 
 flaming faggots I send out the old shout of Salvation among 
 these Kundelungu glens. Although weary to the marrow 
 of my bones, the very thought of the rocks thrilling for 
 the first time with God's praise is enough to rouse an echo 
 thrill in one's cold old heart. As you muse the fire burns, 
 and then it is you pour out on them the flood of longing 
 entreaty, the whole ministry reacting on your sickly soul 
 like a bracing tonic. Thus do we drink of the brook by 
 the way. Why doubt that after many days the blessing 
 will come ? Grey and gloomy and grand the forest arches 
 over us, each tree preaching to us the old sermon of the 
 oak. Which runs : The creation of a thousand forests is 
 in one acorn. After all, you may count the apples on a 
 tree, but can you count the trees in even one apple ? 
 
 (Later.) 
 Yes ! and come it did, for fourteen long years after- 
 wards wonderful news reaclics the Lufira Flats from 
 tliesc very hills. Down comes a man with a long 
 string knotted into more than thirty knots. Ench of 
 tliese knots, bo it known, represents a man or woman 
 who has professed conversion to Christ, and Mr. and 
 
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BORING OUT EAST 355 
 
 Mrs. Anton went up to verify the strange news con- 
 tained in this strano;e mountaineer's strin 2; " note-book." 
 There they were, women in the majority, on the same 
 range at Lofoi, praising God among the rocks ; by a sort 
 of spiritual spontaneous combustion the heather was on 
 fire. For the Word of God is not bound, and these lonely 
 hearts were profoundly converted. In later years, on Lake 
 Mweru, these women make the best Evangelists. Of a 
 Sunday you can spy some old negro ladies toddling out to 
 the suburbs, a six or eight mile walk, in order to pass along 
 their good news. Look closely at one of these and you can 
 see the dear old face wreathed in most contagious smiles, 
 the very manner of her joy proof positive that she has 
 got what the world cannot take away. With her there 
 is no case of logic versus love, for lo ! tove is her logic. 
 Her manner, too, so nicely balanced between boldness 
 and timidity. 
 
 "Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true, 
 A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew." 
 
 (" Heart " is a word that the Bible is just full of. " Brain," 
 
 I believe, is not once mentioned.) Theories are for the 
 
 human brain, but the human heart must have a person, 
 
 and woe to this old dear if her faith has not given her 
 
 a Person to talk to all along life's weary road, for her 
 
 own tribe now turns the cold shoulder on her. Say 
 
 nearly sixty years of age (on the wrong side), she has 
 
 wakened up to realise with a glad surprise that God 
 
 the Multi-Millionaire has invested all His capital in 
 22 
 
856 THINKING BLACK 
 
 her soul. The night is fast approaching when for her 
 there can be no work, so off the frail old saint goes with 
 this great thought energizing her journey of Evangel into 
 a toddling trot. If life be indeed " a sheet of paper 
 white, on which each one of us can write a word or two, 
 and then comes — Night" — I say, if this be a just simile 
 of life, then, to pursue the parable, we may add that this 
 old lady has discovered her sheet of paper is getting so 
 small that she must economize space and write close the 
 remaining words. 
 
 Lady, indeed, one must call her, for if you overhear 
 what she says to her equals it is all besprinkled with 
 polite phrases : "But, Sir" — or "No, Madam," the whole 
 being normal tribal usage, not mere make-believe. You 
 might, in fiict, be reading Boswell's Johnson, the re- 
 spectful " Sirs " so marvellously many. To seek to 
 establish a ratio of success is, of course, invidious, but 
 personally I prefer the soft-voiced pleading of these 
 old ladies to the loud young man who winds up with 
 his seven last woes. For Grandmother is really a 
 weeping sower, and with tears in her eyes and Christ 
 in her heart, she warns of impending doom. Then a 
 sort of sob steals into her story, the sincerity of that 
 sob making the warning all the more solemn. In her 
 own sad experience, I know for a fact that one of these 
 old dears has discovered that tears are a true telescope 
 lens through which she can pierce far into the heavens 
 above, so no wonder she believes in being a weeping 
 sower, for tears cannot blind if they be telescopes. 
 
BORING OUT EAST 357 
 
 Contrast many a young negro preacher who can cover 
 such an amazing territory of Christian truth in his 
 sermon, forgetful of the fact that to preach the ever- 
 lasting Gospel does not mean to preach everlastingly. 
 
 tF tP V 
 
 The ant-bear (Mpendwa) very annoyingly burrows 
 his holes right in the path, and the unwary traveller 
 could with great ease break his leg in any one of them. 
 So sly are these curious sloths, that many a native on 
 the wrong side of forty has lived his life without seeing 
 one. My man, a Lambaite, killed four of these scarce 
 monsters in a most cold-blooded, efficient manner. With 
 all their wit centred in their two-inch-long claws, they 
 tunnel far underground, and the trick is to out- 
 manoeuvre him in his network of subterranean subtlety. 
 Hibernating as they do for half the year, the solemn 
 way they go to bed for their sloth-sleep has won for 
 them the negro phrase, " drunk with sleep." Like five 
 long red sausages, each six feet in length, there they 
 were, packed in, snout first, thick tail pointing outwards. 
 With a warrior light in his eye, my man wriggled into 
 the tunnel with his huge spear and killed No. 1 in a 
 long choking moan. Then followed the solemn " sealing 
 of the tube," the process being repeated with the certainty 
 of a professional until four out of the five all died by 
 his long lance. An adequate English analogy would be 
 to imagine the London Tube Railway throwing up 
 quantities of fresh meat out of the earth ! No. 5, how- 
 ever, had sapped a new tunnel of escape, escape in this 
 
358 THINKING BLACK 
 
 case being not by exit, but a deeper burrow, defying man 
 to breathe therein. 
 
 Given good paint and a better painter, here you have 
 a mountain incident that would hang as best Academy 
 picture of the year. Last night a native after sundown 
 was holding his breath as he picked his way down the 
 face of this precipice, eye and ear pledged to perpetual 
 vigilance in the really awful venture. So engrossed was 
 the benighted traveller in testing every fearful foothold 
 that he was wholly unconscious of a hungry old lion 
 stealthily stalking him from behind. Intrepidly venture- 
 some, this man-eater had already gained on his pro- 
 spective prey by taking two chasms at two noiseless 
 bounds. Is there going to be no slip between that cup 
 of a ravine and this lip of a precipice ? The astounding 
 answer is that here is a lion planning murder who 
 commits suicide. Madly springing at his man over 
 the chasm, but not reckoning on the narrow ledge of 
 treacherous schist for a foothold, down he dashes over 
 the last jutting crag of time into the gulf of eternity, 
 a dark yawning abyss, hundreds of feet deep. The next 
 day, far, far below, he was raked out by the people of 
 the plain, broken in every bone. 
 
 Eastward ho ! Left the toy-town in the rocks and 
 were soon buried in thick woods, wdiich only once broke 
 on a " parkland " centred by a palm, the useful Hyphxne. 
 At 8.30, to the surprise of everybody, we stood on the 
 Eastern edge of Kundelungu Range and looked down on 
 the beautiful Luapula Valley stretching far to the East, 
 
BORING OUT EAST 359 
 
 rolling away in rich slopes and watered by a thousand 
 streams — " a delightsome land." First glimpses, though, 
 are fictitious, and the boys who are ahead cheer us on. 
 Swinging round a shoulder of the hill, we emerge from its 
 terminal clump of trees, and, perched out on a last ledge 
 of rock, away on the N.E. we spy our first and most 
 wonderful view of Lake Mweru — a mighty sheet upon 
 which the morning sun, painted as never Turner painted 
 it, is shining like a mass of liquid gold. But who could 
 dare to describe that colour ? — " not colour, Mr. Buskin, 
 but conflagration." Even if it were possible, it would be 
 profanation. With no East shore visible, and not having 
 seen a sister-sheet of water like this Mweru since our last 
 sight of the Atlantic, the sheer extravaganza of the sight 
 makes one shout for joy. Born as I was by the seashore, 
 now it is the curtain of memory rises, and this wide 
 waste of waters welcoming us as we emerge from the long 
 choking grass makes us feel as though we had escaped 
 from a tropical trap. Away to the South, banks of 
 morning mist are rolling up from the lagoons of the 
 Luapula, and only very faintly can we guess Kasembe's 
 capital, sleeping prosperously in the sun, on the British 
 side. British, indeed, that soil, for the other day Ehodes 
 painted all those trans-Luapula lands red on the map, a 
 clannish colour the red sun repeats every morning it rolls 
 up like a ball of fire. Here comes a dissolving scene 
 which memory makes its own for ever, every moment a 
 memento. For slowly, but surely, time that tempereth 
 all things takes the flare out of this red flambeau, twenty 
 
360 THINKING BLACK 
 
 minutes representing as many dissolving shades in the 
 softening scheme of colour : step by step, shade by shade, 
 working up from monochrome through tint after tint, 
 through rose into pale lemon, through sea-green into the 
 ultimate azure. Tell me, please, is plain Peter Bell my 
 negro neighbour taking it all in as he looks moodily at 
 vacancy ? Apparently, I am observing while he is only 
 seeing, for a beam of light in the eye is not charged with 
 thought, is it ? Or can it be that he, a landsman, is 
 thinking of this Lake as the murderer of fishermen in 
 their coggly dug-outs, the red sunrise symbolic of the 
 red blood of its victims ? To him this painted poetry is 
 the plainest of plain prose, for in cruelty this Lake is feline. 
 It licks your feet and purrs very pleasantly, but it will 
 crack your bones for all that — then wipe its foaming lips 
 as if naught had happened. But the grandest bit of 
 Geography in the whole landscape is the glorious West 
 side, away up North towards Luanza, where the sharp 
 headlands have given the West marshes the slip. Rising 
 sheer from the Lake, these blufis are seen buttressing the 
 whole North- Western Coast, dozens of little streams vying 
 with each other how to leap over the cliff gracefully with 
 waterfalls like a white mare's tail. The last of these is a 
 gaunt spike of headland called Chipuma, alongside which 
 the river Luanza flows into Mweru — our home in the far 
 future. 
 
 But in Africa you too, like plain Peter Bell, must get 
 all your poetry out of the prose of life. So off we go 
 jolting down the hillside, heading for the first town in 
 
BORING OUT EAST 361 
 
 the valley whose lights we watched last night winking 
 out one by one. But we draw blank, for all have taken 
 to the grass on our approach, fearing the advent of the 
 Arabs, who are raiding the whole valley. Shiraba is the 
 Arab leader's name = Lion. The eerie stillness reigning 
 in the abandoned town bodes no good for the morrow, so 
 we dart on into the valley, heading for Chilolo Ntambo's. 
 Quite a political portent in his way, this plucky man has 
 strongly entrenched himself in the plains, resolved to 
 break or be broken. Meanwhile, and in curious contrast, 
 the scattered aboriginal chiefs are at their old game of 
 hateful and baneful plotting ; hysterically crying out one 
 moment, " Come and kill Shimba ! " and the next rush- 
 ing up among the rocks for refuge. Torn into tribal 
 tatters as they are, the Arabs come on the scene and, of 
 course, instead of killing the flames of negro faction, they 
 kindle them. Then it is the old cry rings through the 
 glens, the bitter wail of Eachel weeping for her children. 
 
 As fighting is again imminent, and Shimba is gathering 
 for another attempt, I send on messengers to carry the 
 olive branch, their business being to clinch the cardinal 
 postulate that I am "a thing of naught " ( Wagere). 
 Ergo, being a mere pilgrim travelling through, they must 
 not expect me to help them in this mundane matter of 
 aiming a gun-barrel in their trumpery squabble. When 
 I told this candid cut-throat that it was the honourable 
 business of the Church militant to suffer blows rather 
 than strike them, he seemed almost inclined to adroitly 
 interpose a big black fist between his face and mine by 
 
362 THINKING BLACK 
 
 way of testing the temper of my peace platitude. Press- 
 ing on, an armed escort emerges from the grass with a 
 roar, hut these brimstone blacks acclaim us as brother cut- 
 throats and seem quite sure we will kill three negroes for 
 their one. Once, twice, and yet thrice I break in on them 
 with a disclaimer — no, they don't want my olive branch, 
 for when I'm for peace, like King David, then they are for 
 war. Tell them to mortify the flesh and they will indeed 
 agree to do so, but it is their enemy's flesh they mean 
 to mortify with a spear-thrust. Thus encircled by a ring 
 of rascals, we trudge on, only to encounter escort No. 2 on 
 the edge of their stockade den, the horrible huzzahs 
 suggesting that this out-at-elbows Missionary is reckoned 
 a staunch supporter of their war. Remember, all this is 
 a mere ovation to my white skin, not white character, 
 and it is not at all flattering to recall the fact that yonder 
 red-haired hobbledehoy of an Englishman, smoking his 
 short pipe at the corner of Seven Dials, would get as 
 royal a welcome. Besides, ovation notwithstanding, you 
 need not go away and fancy everybody in the town is 
 thinking of you : nay, verily, he is like you, he is think- 
 ing of himself. Not even a very tiny idea had they in 
 the back of their heads that Christ was versus Barabbas. 
 
 But in Africa I have long ago learned that you must 
 put up with a great deal if you would put down a great 
 deal, and here is no exception. Greeting the Chief, this 
 kindly man has the kindly idea that he should decorously 
 shake hands with me a la Europeen, so for the first 
 time in his life he experiments on a hand-shake. Then 
 
BORING OUT EAST 363 
 
 after laboriously moving my arm up and down for some 
 minutes like a stiff pump-handle he lets it go, only to be 
 seconded by his wife, a small and very daintily finished 
 little lady. This dame, I suppose, thought she had made 
 quite a toilet. Ordinarily dressed in a simple and strong 
 homespun, to-day she thinks herself irreproachably 
 gowned in an old ragged and coloured blanket, marred 
 with as many patches as blotches. Why is it that, right 
 down from the days of Mother Eve, as soon as a woman 
 arrives at self-consciousness her first thought is of a new 
 dress ? In the local homespun she would have been 
 handsome, but now she is horrid. A sprinkling of loud 
 yellow patches on a red ground is her ideal. They 
 despise even fine lace, think it a rag, and call it " a lot 
 of holes tied together." Alas ! evil communications do 
 indeed corrupt good manners, for in half a tick this new 
 stiff pump-handle salute with high and low is de rigueur. 
 But Chilolo is a real and reliable sort of a man and would 
 make a good impression if sketched when he is speaking 
 in his firm and yet quite unostentatious way. If dis- 
 simulation is the mask of the soul, then sincerity is its 
 face, and I like the transparency of this old hero. Smoking 
 a meditative pipe, he told the tale of these Arabs' entry 
 into the country on the old plea of honest trade. Told of 
 their picking a quarrel after a thousand hateful impertin- 
 ences. Told finally of attack and repulse in quick suc- 
 cession, with the promise of a real big battle on the 
 morrow. Such, then, is " the man behind the gun," a 
 desperate enemy but a fine friend. An African this 
 
364 THINKING BLACK 
 
 wlio in many tilings is far and near belauded as a Chief 
 with a delicate and scrupulous sense of honour, and 
 certainly Mushidi showed his usual shrewdness when he 
 gave this man long ago a kind of governorship (Diyanga) 
 of the Luapula Valley. 
 
 But these bellicose blacks have hearts of adamant 
 where God's Gospel is concerned, and only met my appeal 
 with mortified glances. Every man of them said in his 
 heart — and a horrible saying it is — that God was a fool 
 to leave His Son to die. In Luba the very phrase " a 
 fool's death "is rendered "a sheep's death" (Isa. liii. 7). 
 Chilolo's son, a young exquisite, was as solemn as a 
 sermon when he said that no black man would believe in 
 such a God. And here was I, all alone in that hot den, 
 with lacerated feelings and blistered feet — ah, how a 
 Missionary suddenly shrivels up into himself with one 
 whiff of such loneliness. But I cannot go back, so I must 
 go forward — and what a goal, the linking up with our own 
 English race from East ! Any day something thrilling 
 may happen, for coincidently with our moving in from the 
 Western Atlantic are they not also boring up here into 
 the Interior from the Indian Ocean ? The exact picture 
 of this exciting thing is to be found in thinking of us as 
 engaged in the excavation of a tunnel, and here we have 
 at least reached the delirious point where we almost 
 begin to hear the pickaxes of the excavators at work in the 
 other side of the tunnel ! Of course the plan of route 
 ahead is not even optional now. It seems it has fallen to 
 my lot, and I hope to my delight, as well as my duty, to 
 
BORING OUT EAST 365 
 
 strike Mweru at its South-Western corner, and negotiate 
 the first trans-Lake voyage in dug-outs. 
 
 But here it is a long line of lion incidents occur, the 
 curious persistency of the thing being like the African's 
 proverbial rain that never comes but it pours. At any 
 rate, they seem to be all the fashion, whether biped lions 
 or quadrupeds, for here is this putrid scoundrel of an 
 Arab calling himself Shimba = The Lion, and even Chilolo 
 claims the suffix-surname Ntambo, which also means 
 " Lion." Certainly the roaring in name soon became a 
 roaring in reality. Forewarned of trouble ahead, in the 
 phrase Ntanda ya Jcava, " the forest is on fire," we 
 began by camping early and building a strong skerm, as 
 war-parties do. That night, however, we drew a blank, 
 the only incident being a troop of elephants rushing past 
 at sundown, making a noise like thunder. Plunging into 
 the fens near by, they bathed for more than an hour, and 
 with glee seemingly. Nearing Mbovola's village, however, 
 we find the villagers outside, frantic with excitement, and 
 bravely roasting a large lioness which had daringly leaped 
 the fifteen-feet-high stockade and killed a woman ; move 
 on and into this village, but just as we enter at one side, 
 down goes the portcullis gate with a smash at the river 
 entrance, breaking the leap of the large male lion ac- 
 companied by two little ones, all seemingly bent on 
 avenging the lioness. Then, day and night, the drums 
 din their deafening noise, all hope lost of your sleeping up 
 arrears of the past wakeful nights. 
 
 Nor will the villagers let us ofi" the next day, so here 
 
366 THINKING BLACK 
 
 we rest. This bereaved and famislied lion having made 
 up his masterful mind to avenge his consort, twice 
 attempted to spring the stockade, but was driven off. 
 Thus our first fears were justified of a long lion trail, and 
 the links soon became many in the chain of prophecy. 
 The appalling rinderpest has killed off all the antelopes, 
 hence the famished lions are forced to raid the hamlets 
 and play for higher stakes. 
 
 Farther along, Mbayo, in the same valley, very 
 pluckily killed a large male lion with an elephant-spear. 
 Well primed with liquor, this tall native met his man- 
 eater at the village gate. Just as it sprang for him, he 
 fixed his spear as an infantry soldier does his bayonet on 
 the command " Prepare for cavalry," the lion running 
 himself through the heart in his spring. The famislied 
 fraternity came round during the night, and those royal 
 rogues actually ate up their dead comrade, making much 
 noise in the mastication. It is madness to send our 
 little boys to draw water or fetch firewood here without 
 an escort. But the end is not yet. Farther along in that 
 same valley — to be exact, at Kapara's — a great lion was 
 killed measuring thirteen and a half feet from tip to 
 tail. He, poor fellow, was a shaggy veteran with blunted 
 teeth, starving seemingly, for his ribs were looking 
 through. This lion must have welcomed death, as his 
 poor right paw was a swollen festered mass, a large acacia 
 thorn deeply embedded in the quick. Thus we bowl 
 along into the savannah, the rank grass, ten feet high, 
 shutting out view of everything save a little blur of blue 
 
BORING OUT EAST 367 
 
 overhead. After a few hours of this kind of work, 
 needle-pointed grass seeds showering down, the long stalks 
 rebounding sharply on the face, a kind of smothering 
 sensation is the result, and you wish for just one whiff of 
 ocean ozone. With hundreds of spear-pointed seeds 
 sticking out of your shirt it is easy to become a very 
 porcupine in temper as well as appearance ! The 
 science of walking through grass of this description which 
 overhangs and hides the path is very simple, what a poet 
 has described as " following some fine instinct in the feet." 
 Like a blind man who cannot sec the trail, you throw 
 forward your feet in a pawing manner, pull your body 
 after them, and feel along in this fashion. Boasting of 
 carnivora as it does, this savannah is a lively, dangerous 
 place, and one has to be always high-strung and vigilant 
 in the long Sfrass. Even down to the shore of the 
 Mulungwishi River where we embarked, these lions 
 dogged our steps, and actually farewelled us with a double 
 episode. It was on this wise. 
 
 In the far distance grey Mweru Lake was hoarsely 
 threatening a storm, and the scudding clouds revealed a 
 furtive moon. There, jammed into the thick aquatic 
 grass, lay our canoes for the morrow, the beach so tangled 
 that we, for the night, were shut into a tight little skerm 
 to save our skins. At one in the morning an ominous 
 scrunching, and the famished lions are eating our 
 canoes. Eating our canoes ! Very vaguely and at 
 random I aimed for the matted clump of marsh, but even 
 this guess shot caused the noise to stop with alacrity far 
 
368 THINKING BLACK 
 
 too sudden for it to have been a miss. Then came day- 
 break and the discovery of our nocturnal damages ; as for 
 the canoes, the breakages were merely in the singular and 
 not in the plural, but how singular — only the fifth boat 
 crunched to pieces ! So, too, the lions ; one only had 
 been wounded, and she caused a lot of trouble before she 
 died. Shimpauka, one of the right sort, followed her up 
 but lost traces in the tangle, then stupidly let go his best 
 charge at a buck, reloading with only a poor pinch of 
 powder as he presumed he had lost the lion. Hardly, 
 however, had his gun spoken when he discovered his 
 stupid error. For there, sure enough, and only a dozen 
 paces farther ahead, lay my lady, not nearly dead but 
 merely nursing her broken leg. If she offers battle (and 
 she must), then she will fight and fight to the death. 
 Then the terrible trouble began, for the dense growth had 
 spoiled matters and forced him to see this thing through 
 — retreat impossible. So he drew a careful bead on the 
 lioness, the thought maddening him the while that here 
 he was firing a stupid squib, sure only to jag the exas- 
 perated beast into mad recrimination. And what do 
 you think? There you see the doleful duel begin in 
 which, tit-for-tat, the wrath of a man is matched against 
 the wrath of a lioness. Their blood is up. On rushes 
 the beast and on rushes the black ! The strong, strapping 
 fellow, in a frenzy of determination, and longing to get it 
 over, hugs the huge lioness in a strangling grasp, and over 
 they go on the ground in a whirl of man and lion. The 
 lioness has dug her claws into the mass of muscle on the 
 
BORING OUT EAST 369 
 
 man's bcack ; and the man, smarting with pain, grips at the 
 lion's carotids like a vice, only, however, to get his three 
 fingers crunched off. But his right hand is free, and still 
 he clings with all the tenacity of terror to that beast's 
 throat — yes, clings to conquer. A gasp, a dying gurgle, 
 and the lioness owns up to the lordship of man — choked 
 stone dead. To this day, all you can get out of the 
 maimed hunter is a hissing intake of the breath, and a 
 sharp clenching of his teeth, with the staccato whine : 
 " Oh ! if I only had had one tiny point of steel to jag her 
 with ; yes, even a nail or a needle to claw her when she 
 was clawing me." 
 
 But all this is exceptional, you say. Incredible as it 
 may seem, this getting into grips with Felis leo is not at 
 all uncommon. Here is my man, Kasansu, who has had 
 almost the identical experience, only in his case no shot 
 is fired, the lion frankly and fairly under-muscled. This 
 same long grass did it all, for although doubly armed with 
 gun and spear, the lion and the man were in grips before 
 the latter (startled, indeterminate) even remembered that 
 he was armed — disarmed rather, for in panic both spear 
 and gun were thrown to the winds. The beast, of course, 
 was too terribly fresh to succumb to mere throttling, so, 
 when they rolled over, Kasansu, by a clever wriggle, 
 got on to its back, and gripping the nape of the lion's 
 neck, willy, nilly, pinned his hairy head on the ground. 
 Believe it, there was much champing of the bit on the 
 lion's part at this curious compulsion to eat humble pie, 
 but the man's roaring for succour had brought on the 
 
370 THINKING BLACK 
 
 scene a young fellow whose only weapon was a hoe-handle 
 ' — wood, only wood, when steel was the clamant need. 
 Nevertheless, the youngster, after much entreaty, was 
 persuaded to come on with his stick, the lad's haunting- 
 terror being that Kasansu out of sheer exhaustion would 
 let go his grip of this licking- the-dust lion. But it all 
 ended in victory. Crack ! crack ! crack ! and the lion's 
 skull was soon broken by this simple hoe-handle. In 
 later days a relative of this lion in the same district — 
 " Charlie," they called him — died only after running up 
 a big butcher's bill of nearly sixty dead natives. To be 
 exact, fifty- seven. 
 
 [Late7\) 
 Blood still dogs us, and here comes another death, a 
 weird one. Picture my boy killed by such an incredibly 
 unlikely animal as the ratel, a sort of skunk that feeds on 
 honey. I can well conceive how the whole thing may 
 strike the reader of this chronicle as absurd. It happened 
 at Mungedi's, and the curious tale runs that this three-feet- 
 long badger gets systematically drunk from an angry 
 alcohol he distils from the beehives. Living as he does so 
 wholly on honey, the ratel has learned to sample it in all 
 stages of fermentation, and finally has struck the idea of 
 making his own distillery ! This he does by digging a 
 pot-like hole with his three middle claws on the wet bank 
 of a river. Now he rams home the honey with a careful 
 admixture of water, and off he goes to await the issue of 
 the loyal law of fermentation. In two days or so, back 
 he comes to find his alcohol foaming up out of the hole, 
 
BORING OUT EAST 371 
 
 and in a few minutes Mr. Badger is rolling drunk. The 
 liquor swimming through his veins like a glorious fire 
 makes him mad for murder. In heiofht not much more 
 than a foot, anterior claws say two inches, here is my boy 
 killed by a drunk skunk. The skin is so tantalizingly 
 loose that if you grip it, he can actually turn in it and 
 grip you. Another instance of Africa being a topsy-turvy 
 land, an animal being doubly a distiller and a drunkard. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Beneath all this opulence of colour there lurks the 
 sinister thought that Palpalis is ambushed in every green 
 clump, transforming it into a weeping willow. For this 
 vile fly means sleeping sickness, and sleeping sickness 
 means a wipe-out. Now meandering through mossy 
 glades, now thundering down the gorge, these Congo 
 tributaries really ring hollow at heart. Only the birds and 
 beasts have a good time down here. There, serene in it 
 all, the black darter sits sentinel on a snag jutting out of 
 the water, and sunning his dark shining-green wings out- 
 stretched. Oblivious of the masked murder all around, 
 clouds of snow-white egrets with bright yellow bills in 
 the still reaches of the river fly lazily up and down 
 to their favourite feeding haunts. On, on you glide 
 down the gorge to the steady dip of your paddles, 
 the river brawling over the rocks and preaching as we 
 pass. True for you. Father Congo ! In Africa we do 
 find that a Christian is not a canal cut out by a foot-rule ; 
 
 not a canal, but a river. And a river has its deeps and 
 23 
 
372 THINKING BLACK 
 
 shallows ; has its floods and shrinkages ; is, in fact, God's 
 own parable of a missionary. It only passes on what it 
 gets. It only babbles like a baby when it is shallow. 
 And it ever darts strongly and surely for the sea when 
 too full for sound and foam. 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 Kavanga : the Gates of the Morning 
 
''There's a legion that never was listed, 
 That carries no colours nor crest, 
 But split in a thousand detachments 
 Is breaking the road for the rest" 
 
 "I propose one more society in the Church— an 
 S.S.S.S. — or Society for the Suppression of Super- 
 fluous Societies." E. P. Marvin. 
 
 "Good it is we have no Society guaranteeing a 
 stated salary. For cut off as we are from our 
 nearest bank by one thousand miles, the said 
 Society would be politely and cleverly baffled how 
 to send our quarterly remittance. 
 
 From Author's Letter. 
 
 374 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 Kavanga : the Gates of the Morning 
 
 T N which the lost-in-a-forest traveller 
 learns that the Lord of Eternity is 
 the Lord of One Hour. 
 
 BUT the amalgamated worries of Africa seem all shut 
 into the three days we are lost in the savannah, 
 groping and guessing our way. Cutting back from 
 the Luapula, we adopt the very risky but necessary plan 
 of striking pathless across country. Through forest-land 
 heading all the while for a certain far-off faint blue point 
 on the tableland. " The Plantations of God " is the 
 admonishing native forest name for what to me was a 
 trap. Here it is you put your foot where never even 
 black man preceded you, and here too you learn the 
 lesson of all the twists in the African trail. It is the old 
 line-of-least-resistance idea, for day after day you must 
 accommodate yourself to the new and changing aspect of 
 country lying across your track. A shag leads off by 
 blocking the way, and the shorter the shag the more 
 dangerous it is, because hidden in the grass. Your boot 
 saves you, a white man, but even then you would rather 
 
 375 
 
376 THINKING BLACK 
 
 save the boot, for you only escape a cut at the expense of 
 cutting your own precious foot-wear. Now it is that this 
 leather covering appears to the barefoot native both a 
 marvel and a portent, for instead of thinking that the 
 boot merely covers the foot that wears it, his idea is that 
 those few inches of shoe carpet the whole forest with 
 leather. A good lesson this, that even in the smallest 
 boons of life there is nothing like the widest point of 
 view, mere inches multiplied to miles. Literally only so 
 many inches, but actually they cause the whole earth 
 you walk on to be covered with leather, so it all depends 
 on how you look on a little thing. This tale of jags, 
 however, is only one per cent of the story, for the re- 
 maining ninety-nine of your caravan boasts, not boots, 
 but that delicate pneumatic tyre — a bare black foot. 
 Hence all these doublings and twistings of the negro 
 trail, for your naked companion must go gingerly along 
 this never-trodden ground, every wobble being out of 
 deep reverence to some hidden shag or jag in the dense 
 growth. For in order to avoid a pneumatic puncture, 
 he must feel his way along, as against the white man 
 with his leather "clogs" (sic) who can cut across country 
 crunching down all oppositions. Then after the shag 
 comes the stupid young ant-hill demanding another 
 wriggle from the traveller, but this is minor compared 
 with the long detour round a fallen tree : is it not easier 
 to dodge than dislodge it ? This means a twist twenty 
 feet round the end, and long years after this tree has 
 been burned out of existence the pawky path still per- 
 
KAVANGA: GATES OF THE MORNING 377 
 
 petuates that very tree's downfall in the same old bend. 
 Often, too, as a happy accident of environment, wide, 
 roomy elephant-ways open up before you seductively, so 
 off at a tempting tangent you go, although conscious of 
 the cowardice of the thing. For how could a roaming 
 elephant know your path ? Then the blue landmark on 
 the plateau looms out warningly from an opposite point 
 in the skyline, compelling you to play the man and 
 plunge again into the nasty scrub. Finally, all this high- 
 stepping is so fagging that we lie down under a tree and 
 rest like the Seven of Ephcsus : a night in which you 
 dream of being lost, for ever lost in some mad maze — of 
 wandering, for ever wandering in a wilderness of woe. 
 
 No wonder on the morning of the 20th of June, the 
 awakening is almost a glad thing, lost though we are in 
 pathless bush. At least the erstwhile dreamer can con- 
 sole himself with the faded adage about dreams going by 
 contraries, and you spring from your couch on the ground, 
 proud, at least, you have shaken off that feeling of utter 
 lack of volition ever haunting a dreamer. But a tabloid 
 for your soul is as necessary as an anti-fever tabloid for 
 your body, because after a day of jagging thorns we had 
 a night of jagging mosquitoes. (To get "keyed up" for 
 the day is our bush phrase for the true tonic effect of a 
 tabloid of quinine. ) These blood-suckers make you rise, 
 tingling with fever, but here comes the tabloid for your 
 soul : the Book of Hosea opens at the sunrise words, " His 
 goings forth are prepared as the morning." No doubt, 
 " lost " is the true tale of our folly, nevertheless there you 
 
378 THINKING BLACK 
 
 have the honest " Bible " of the route, a prepared path for 
 a prepared morning. The curative property of that simple 
 sweet line was wonderful. So away we start once more, 
 and right off get soaking wet in the thick dew — not the 
 modest dew of an English meadow sward, but dew distilled 
 ten feet from the ground on spear grass and showering 
 down on you like a spray-bath. "One native taught me a 
 lesson in this thick dew as to " counting my blessings " 
 even in times of trial. " God is good," said he, " for the 
 thickest dew in Africa falls in hardest drought," a reminder 
 that God in all lands "tempers the wind to the shorn 
 lamb." But, at least, in this drenching dew I have a coat 
 on my back, whereas all my poor fellows are shivering 
 nude, so they deserve the palm. Indeed, as you tramp 
 along, here is a point steadily and surely gaining ground 
 in your brain, to wit, that this man Friday of yours is a 
 most companionable comrade and much more real as a man 
 than his wordy preacher. On the march, for instance, his 
 thirst is the real thing, and not the ill-tempered craving 
 of an Englishman ; so, too, with hunger, his is the hard- 
 gnawing sort, the deep hunger of faintness he gladly 
 satiates with the sundown meal of coarse mush. Ah, 
 " ye have heard of the patience of Job," but know also 
 that here are men of grit and tenacity of purpose. Cold 
 numbs, hunger gnaws, and they, down at the very bottom 
 of life's hill, give never a twitch or twinge by way of 
 grumble. In comparison we, as a grumbling, greedy race 
 of Europeans, are all self, self, self, from the soles of our 
 feet to the top of our crown. 
 
KAVANGA : GATES OF THE MORNING 379 
 
 Nearing noon the boys fire a broadside of their match- 
 locks into a dense cavalcade of elephants, a mere pinprick 
 in the armour-plating : £10,000 of ivory on the move — 
 what a sight ! Each tusker with five or more wives 
 according to the length of ivory. The tusks, too, of 
 varied sorts and colours, some not at all normal, and one 
 great bull with only one tooth. Another has a freak tusk, 
 and while the normal one gleams gracefully up in posi- 
 tion, its twin tusk twists down in the opposite direction, 
 the great beast looking a horror. But remember, animals 
 though they are, this is not a mob but an army, and one 
 great bull seems to lord it over the whole battalion. In 
 response to a most aristocratic wave of his trunk, like a 
 Field Marshal's baton, away they rush straight ahead, 
 clearing for us, not a path but a royal avenue. The 
 coincidence of our far-oflf landmark, the steel-blue wall 
 of Kundelungu, coming for once into dead line with the 
 track of this army corps of elephants, is surely eloquent 
 of the goings forth of our God being prepared as the 
 morning. Here at last is your prepared path — and made 
 by elephants, too. 
 
 But there is more to follow. Not for nothing are 
 these woods christened by the negroes "the Lord's 
 Larder." "Plantations of God" is their second name 
 for the same idea, and as the native would not dare to 
 dream of driving God out of His own garden, why should 
 I ? " Every beast of the forest is Mine," said The Same, 
 Who proves it by sending this densely packed herd 
 galloping true for objective. (Why recognise God in 
 
380 THINKING BLACK 
 
 great things and exclude Him in small? Why forget 
 that the Lord of Eternity is likewise Lord of an Hour ? 
 Was not the microscope discovered at the same time 
 as the telescope?) But — I repeat it — there is more to 
 follow. Let those who deny the efficiency and sufficiency 
 of Faith for desert diet just wait one moment and watch 
 how these very elephants feed us. A mere way in the 
 wilderness is as nothing to a table in the wilderness, and 
 spread out like lunch at a picnic, "God's elephants" — 
 the negro phrase this — doing it all. Picture this big 
 blundering Jumbo made of God unto us not merely our 
 advance-guard to cleave an onward path, but an elephant 
 it is that providentially becomes our kitchen gardener in 
 the wilds. Remember, or you have missed the point, 
 the last and nearest patch of cultivation we have left far 
 away East along the Luapula, yet here, hidden in the 
 desert — can I believe even one of my five senses? — 
 like a vision from heaven we emerge on a glorious surprise 
 of green pumpkins that eye of man never saw — an " ele- 
 phant garden," they call this green Goshen. For one 
 measureless moment I could not believe my eyes — 
 elephants, the notorious robbers of green crops, now 
 paying back the human -kind in their own stolen vege- 
 tables. Yet how easy and elementary the explanation. 
 Hundreds of miles away, along the green banks of 
 Luapula, a band of these rogues had raided the squash 
 gardens in the moonlight ; then, having cleared out the 
 field, off they rush for the forest, far, far from the 
 dwellings of man. But however excellent Jumbo's 
 
KAVANGA: GATES OF THE MORNING 381 
 
 digestion, these obstinate pumpkin seeds would — well, 
 would not digest, hence these glorious gardens all from 
 stolen fruit. Natural law in the spiritual world, verily. 
 
 At night in the woods we built a large fire, a mighty- 
 roarer five feet high, fed with logs eight feet long. The 
 great blaze flares through the night, and at daybreak we 
 slink out, in the raw morning air, to rub our fingers at 
 this all-night (and all-right) blaze. But we soon find 
 that rhese parts are alive with tsetse, so the only way 
 to avoid their tormenting sting is to go off in the moon- 
 light, travelling six hours — not per day, but per night. 
 High in the west hangs the monster moon as white as a 
 new half-crown. But our path, remember, is fringed 
 with an endless grove of trees, and the moon weirdly 
 throws their sharp black shadows on the ground. 
 Peeping out from these ghostly traceries of trees, we 
 guess here and there the tiny ribbon of trail hardly 
 hinting its presence, and this elusive little path is our 
 precious all. Only eighteen inches wide though it be, 
 it is a sure guarantee of real standing ground, every- 
 where else a mass of shags and jags. Newcomers laugh 
 at it, call it " the corkscrew," " crooky-crooky," and 
 other naughty names ; but in later years the man who 
 ought to know is he who " bikes " it. What, a " bike " 
 in such a tangle ? Yes, why not ? Hypercritical as he 
 is forced to be, he is pledged to praise it with a reason ! 
 For, nota bene, the negro and the cyclist are bound in 
 a common bond of horror lest they puncture their 
 double Dunlop tyres, the negro's bare toes being as 
 
382 THINKING BLACK 
 
 perfect a pneumatic tube as the cyclist's. So, when 
 that bare-footed black tiptoes it through the bush, 
 dodging every suspicion of a jag, how unerringly can 
 a bike follow where his tender toes have trod ! Thus 
 the very serpentine shape of that path is its choicest 
 character, for every twist and turn indicates that 
 Mr. Negro has dodged a shag or thorn, and how could 
 a white man afford time to turn back every blade of 
 grass to discover hidden holes and obstacles ? A parable 
 all this of our African life — the black man leads, and we 
 follow. The best place to prove all this is out West, 
 a mere mile out from any European's " station," for he, 
 good man, generally scratches a wide road out from his 
 gate. And long before a break in the trees shows just 
 the peep of his gable, this pioneer road tells of a white 
 man ahead. But does your negro use even this new- 
 fangled clearing with its almost painful Roman straight- 
 ness of aim ? Oh yes., but only in his own old wriggly 
 way. There, right in the new road you spy the same 
 old twisty trail, a path within a path, a circle within a 
 square ; the African still dictating to the white man, 
 still utilising him up to a certain point and then throw- 
 ing him over. Parable, indeed, for is not the negro's 
 way of walking like his way of working ? Plays with 
 us and our methods, taking just what suits him, rejecting 
 all the rest. 
 
 The 26th of June is our third day of this kind of 
 thing, and the facts and the philosophy of the situation 
 alike point to a new enemy attacking us in the honey- 
 
KAVANGA : GATES OF THE MORNING 383 
 
 bird. Our meal-bags depleted, the bewitching cry of 
 this bird quite disorganises the march, one man after 
 another dropping out of line to follow its lead. Finally, 
 the percentage of this defection ranges so alarmingly 
 from zero to a hundred that we call a halt for stragglers, 
 as it is extremely dangerous to lose sight of one another 
 in this wilderness. To your great surprise and greater 
 indignation, one, two, even three hours pass in waiting ; 
 man after man dropping in with a lordly gift of whitest 
 honey and a pleading, propitiatory smile to atone for his 
 crime. (" Own up and pay up," remember, is the forest 
 rule.) Would gladly buy for instant, indignant use some 
 of that wax Ulysses stuffed into the ears of his sailors 
 to pass the Sirens safely. Now it is you resolve never, 
 never more to enter on such a ruinous game of travel 
 as this " heads — I win, tails — you lose " groping and 
 guessing in pathless bush. Oh, those shameful hours of 
 fret ! fret 1 fret ! Did not John Wesley say, " I have 
 no more right to fret than I have to curse and swear " ? 
 Surely this is the kind of facetious forest described by 
 Gordon Gumming as a forest of fish-hooks relieved here 
 and there with a patch of penknives. 
 
 One sight I saw there, far from human ken, and 
 never shall I forget it — a sort of glimpse away back at 
 prehistoric man. As far as cold ink can do it, let me tell 
 you what I saw — a theme this for blinding tears. There, 
 leaping about from tree to tree, exactly like a monkey, 
 was a horrible human being stark naked. A poor woman 
 this who had lived nearly all her days as an animal 
 
384 THINKING BLACK 
 
 amongst animals, the bony fingers like talons of a hawk 
 being all the weapons of her forest w^irfare. The body- 
 cunningly coloured like the grey bark of the trees in 
 which she lived, you can scarcely for a moment locate 
 her, until you catch sight of the black eyes gleaming like 
 coals of fire. Then comes a shriek followed by a fierce 
 cataract of what the natives call " monkey curses " 
 (Mafinge ahorowe), and ofi" she springs from tree to tree, 
 twisting her face into a grotesque sneer. She has 
 forgotten how to speak with human modulation and can 
 only screech, a literal proof this of the Spanish saying, 
 " Live with wolves and you will learn to howl." Then 
 a snatch of curious song reaches us from the top of one 
 of the highest trees, a song-dirge containing a half-hint 
 that she was rebel against her race, with a reason : — 
 
 "The black stork croaked into the town 
 A truth that made the folk all frown ; 
 'Twas a message weighted with grief : 
 'The Earth is God's: man's a thief!'" 
 
 She had fled the dwellings of man, poor soul, driven mad 
 by the injustice of her owm tribe, not a human being now, 
 but the " black stork " roosting on branches and shouting 
 in rebellion against man the robber, *' The Earth is 
 God's : man's a thief." Here is a proof, surely, that 
 insanity is often only the logic of an accurate and 
 overtaxed mind. Even the tough blacks with me nearly 
 wept at this sight of sorrow ; and one old philosopher, 
 after a solemn and dignified pinch of snuff", said, " Truly 
 the human race is only a huge beehive : wc, the human 
 
KAVANGA: GATES OF THE MORNING 385 
 
 bees, go in at the same door, but we dou't sleep in tlie 
 same rooms." Nor did this old orator doubt that God 
 would visit her tormentors even in this life with condign 
 punishment for their evil deeds. Only he was careful 
 to explain how this judgment might not come. " They 
 will not," said he, " become mad, but they may become 
 too wise, for God sees to it that those who steal bananas 
 must pay for them in honey." Rather like what Anne 
 of Austria said : " God does not pay at the end of every 
 day, my Lord Cardinal, but at the end God pays." Or 
 to mix metaphors a bit. Here we have the old error, 
 that because the lightning zigzags it does not know 
 where to strike. These leafy bowers, though, were 
 palatial compared with the cold ant-bear burrows this 
 poor woman slept in when the forest was aflame with 
 lightning heralding wild torrents of rain, her only diet 
 raw wild ants and rawer snakes. There in that living 
 tomb of clammy clay she passed the wild weather, a 
 curious watch-dog contrivance being the capturing of a 
 jackal (Mumhulu) which she tied as sort of sentry to the 
 mouth of her lair. 
 
 " Oh, dwarfed and wronged and stained with sin, 
 Behold ! thou art a woman still ! 
 And by that sacred name and dear, 
 I bid thy better self appear." 
 
 Cringing forward conciliatingly in her direction, I 
 tried to edge nearer, but no good ! The least suspicion 
 of my approach made her frantic, and off she sprang from 
 branch to branch like a wild thing. Fail though I did, 
 
386 THINKING BLACK 
 
 like a stinging whip-lash to the conscience came the 
 thought that we might have saved her had we been only 
 in the country in time. 
 
 The pathless forest breaks occasionally, and for a 
 stretch of three hours or so you see it thinning out ; not 
 now the dense dark thing of the morning, but dotted 
 over with large acacias, mimosas, and Euphorbias. A 
 curious example of the grotesque in vegetation, these 
 candelabra top each sugar-loaf ant-hill with the humor- 
 ous hint that after sundown they will be lit up as forest 
 lamps. The stiff spokes have the insidious suggestion 
 that they were artificially hammered out of bronze, and, 
 child of the desert as this tree is, surely the Taber- 
 nacle "pattern" (Ex. xxv. 9) lampstand was moulded 
 therefrom ? What suggests this most forcibly is the odd 
 Borassus palm here and there towering in the background 
 of these same Euphorbias. Here at least we know 
 where we are. Did not this very ventricose palm pose 
 as the mason's model for the swollen column of the 
 ancient temples of Egypt 1 And is not Egypt the door 
 of Africa? The Hall of Columns, for instance, of Seti i., 
 what is it but only so many Borassus palms petrified in 
 a row ? The same thing this as the Greeks modelling 
 their porticoes and peristyles from the date palm. If, 
 however, these candelabras hint at the bizarre in Nature, 
 farther on we encounter the tragic. Monster cobra-like 
 Lianas hold giant trees of great girth in their death- 
 grip, the victims in every case nearly strangled, and 
 holding out pale, pathetic arms, preaching to us as we 
 
KAVANGA : GATES OF THE MORNING 387 
 
 pass. Was ever parable so eloquent of sin strangling the 
 soul? 
 
 On and on you forge, the tiny track left behind 
 scarcely making any impression on the stubborn grass. 
 Dare to drop your penknife, compass, or anything, and 
 never was needle in haystack so hopelessly lost. Yet 
 even here your negro is an eye-opener, and once again the 
 gulf is seen to yawn between white and black, between 
 Mr. Know Nothing and Mr. Know All. Watch what 
 happens. You make a dive into your pocket for — say, 
 — your compass, and lo, the conviction stabs you that 
 it is lost Very vaguely, somewhere away back in that 
 maze of forest it fell to the ground — nay, not the ground, 
 for that, too, is almost as lost as your compass below the 
 thick tangle of undergrowth. Yet here is a lynx-eyed 
 group of blacks actually daring to describe that hopeless 
 maze of country for miles far to the rear. They know 
 that forest as though they had planted it. As though they 
 had planted it ! Shooting back in memory to the last point 
 where the compass was in use, there they are chattering out 
 an astoundingly intimate description of that mad tangle, 
 tale of twists, loops, and detours. Precisely as a London 
 policeman lecturing Hodge ticks off on his fingers the 
 requisite number of streets he must pass in order to reach 
 the British Museum, so too with these negro blood- 
 hounds and their topsy-turvy forest. Now only a blurred 
 and exasperating memory to Mr. Musungu, here you 
 have them stringing it off like so many London streets. 
 This sort of thing : " Yes, back to that last ant-hill, not 
 
388 THINKING BLACK 
 
 the minaret-shaped one but the dome. Then beyond 
 that, the calabash tree with the broken arm. Farther 
 back now to the sycamore with the hollow in the trunk, 
 the hollow one (N.B.) and not its brother at the 
 side. Beyond that again the clump of bamboos in 
 the dip — yes, the same clump in which the guinea- 
 fowls rose." And so in thought away you go, back, 
 far back through that tangle, the native having 
 made a mental cinematograph of the intricate twists 
 and turns as he passed : trees, grasses, hollows, and 
 stones all assorted and ticketed in the archives of the 
 black brain. 
 
 Who will say summarily and simply what all this 
 "thinking black" means? Wherefore these superacute 
 senses of the raw bush negro ? Here is the African's own 
 answer as scratched down in my note-book from his own 
 lips, the third person singular being originally in the 
 narrative nominative. True to the Roman saying that 
 there is always something new coming out of Africa, the 
 negroes here pretend to have made the great discovery of 
 the ages — a sixth sense. This they call Chumfo, and 
 sure am I it reveals a whole continent of undiscovered 
 negro character. Why is it this negro can smell his way 
 along ? Why is it a black man miles away can get 
 wind of your doings ? What is it that silently tells him 
 all the mixed motives of things, their why's and their 
 wherefore's ? Why is it that two can only keep a secret 
 in Africa when one of them is dead ? Answer : The 
 mighty sixth sense. But what is this sense No. G ? As 
 
KAVANGA : GATES OF THE MORNING 389 
 
 a matter of fearful fact, here we have something "very 
 serious. What is it ? The negro answer is that the so- 
 called sixth sense is only the lightning collapse of all the 
 senses into a sudden instinctive unit : not 5 + 1 = 6, but 
 5 = 1. This away at the dawn of cognition is their 
 definition of what we call instinct. Instinct, that is to 
 say, is the whole five senses collapsed into that unit of 
 sensation which may be represented by the formula : 5 = 1. 
 Now, it is this unity of savage soul that accounts for the 
 marvels of the bush life. He can smell his way. He is 
 all alacrity. His wisdom is not syllogistic but unconscious. 
 Those five gateways of the soul we call "senses" are 
 wide open to Nature, and the " marconigrams " stream in 
 as divergent Five to collapse at once into convergent One. 
 Ask him to argue the point and he would smile : arguing 
 is the five-senses side of the subject ; at the centralised 
 one-sensorium he only knows. This, too, is the reason of 
 the sanctity of all dear "grandmother" philosophy among 
 the sons of men, for " Granny " does not argue the point 
 a la J. S. Mill. She lets Mill patrol the five gateways 
 outside, knowing that they all radiate in on her central 
 point of instinct : — 
 
 "I do not like thee, Dr. Fell, 
 The reason why I cannot tell." 
 
 Mill would have voted for Dr. Fell and proved him 
 lovable : " Granny kens muckle mair." And thus the last 
 is first, mere logic beaten by instinct ; for in God Most 
 High have we not the apotheosis of instinct? The 
 
 24 
 
390 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Divine Omniscience being intuitive and independent of 
 logic certainly partakes rather of the nature of instinct 
 than of reason. True for you, Dr. Holmes : You can hire 
 logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove anything you 
 want to prove. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 *' Great White Lake " 
 
*' Where the sand has drunk hot tears 
 From the brimming eyes of milHons 
 Through the long ungracious years." 
 
 "The tired Lake crawls along the beach 
 Sobbing a wordless sorrow to the moon." 
 
 "Gone down the tide: 
 And the long moonbeam in the hard wet sand 
 Lay like a jasper column half-upreared." 
 
 tv 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 "Great White Lake" 
 
 T N which there devolve on the reader 
 
 the duty and delight of daring the 
 
 first crossing of Lake Mweru in dug-outs. 
 
 LA US DEO, this longest lane in all our wanderings 
 has its glad turning on the 27th of the month. 
 With a great gush of gratitude, we fell in with 
 a tiny tell-tale track gradually growing more defined as 
 it led us out through a dense forest, thick with the lordly 
 Ficus Indica and the larger acacia. White with blossom 
 these latter were, as though holding high festival, the 
 forest jubilant. Emerging at last, we look down on 
 Mulangadi's far-stretching sorghum plantations lying in 
 the rich valley of loam watered by the Lwizi. " Well 
 done ! " everybody shouts as we realise the real extent of 
 these sorghum fields, the white tops waving visible as far 
 as the eye can see. What a cheering coup d'oeil for 
 famished men I Mrs. Experience in Africa is, no doubt, 
 the best because the only teacher, but I regret this 
 excellent school dame always asks such terribly high fees. 
 When will one learn even her A B C of expert travel ? 
 
 393 
 
394 THINKING BLACK 
 
 We broke another old law of African exploration which 
 insists that when the last stream is reached you should 
 cross and camp on the oflf bank ; and here is our penalty 
 this morning, for the Lufukwe has burst in the night, carry- 
 ing away bridges and destroying the cornfields. Moral : 
 In Africa, to-day's "won't" is to-morrow's "cannot," and 
 now what shall we do in the swelling of Jordan, how shall 
 we negotiate the crossing of this turbulent tributary ? 
 Well, somehow or other, after two hours' swimming and 
 battling back and forward, nobody distinctly remembering 
 how, we get over at last. Shall always remember the 
 little boys bobbing about in the turgid water, frantic all 
 of them with cold. Two went swirling^ down-stream like 
 bits of cork and were nearly drowned. Pushing on, we 
 reach a hamlet and get the meeting of the week at a most 
 unlikely place. 
 
 The Chief, a Sauga hunter of great prowess, I found in 
 the hands of his wives, who sat in affectionate proximity 
 to their lord, doing up his hair into a most fantastic 
 coiffure. Purring away like a big black tom-cat on 
 having his fur smoothed the right way by a skilful hand, 
 his funny face looked out on me from a forest of hair. 
 And by way of a looking-glass he, feeling immeasurably at 
 peace with mankind, occasionally cast vain regards into a 
 large bowl of water that, he said, "shadowed" his black 
 beauty. Well, this big, vain, soft-hearted fellow, if not 
 vulnerable himself, led us out again and again in the 
 Gospel ; and there was the Chief Kapwasa from up-stream, 
 just over his shoulder, taking it all in. But truth is not 
 
"GREAT WHITE LAKE " 395 
 
 ours to pare and bate down, so they had to get it — the 
 Evangel of a heaven above and a hell below. This Chief 
 dances round about me with boisterous cordiality, his sole 
 word of greeting being "III!" A poor enough welcome 
 if he knew it, for is it not excellent Latin for " Depart ! 
 make yourself scarce " ? Away back to Adam, I am their 
 first white skin, and the most complimentary description 
 of our lobster-like inteo-ument is this : " The skin of a 
 baby." It gets more serious, however, this pigment 
 puzzle, but the final decision is benighted enough : " God," 
 say they, '' must have passed through Africa in the dark 
 and did not see us properly, but when He reached you 
 whites it was light, so He did not miss any of you. Ye 
 are sons of the day." The same idea this as when the 
 Chief, desiring to let me know I was very clever, said, 
 pointing to the solar angle, " Yes, you were born at half- 
 past seven in the morning ! " a dense negro being told 
 that he was born at twelve o'clock midnight. Contrari- 
 wise, the negro having been made in the darkness, some 
 of the night got worked into the composition of his body, 
 so, black is he born and black he behaves. This twist 
 West, though, is a detour, and we must again head for the 
 East. 
 
 Mweru, the " Great White Lake " as it is called, 
 is still some distance ofi*, yet here it is a surprise sheet 
 of water flashes out from among the trees in the North 
 — Lake Musengeshi this, and a discovery. Sailed round 
 it in dug-outs ; took soundings all over ; mapped it by 
 prismatic and watch, and baptized the thing " Mary 
 
396 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Lake " — Mary for my mother and Lake for itself. Almost 
 as big as Lake Dilolo, a curious thing about this hidden 
 lacustrine gem is that it is only thirty years old, a sort 
 of glorified lagoon, and born in a night The mother 
 Lake is Mweru ; but one mysterious year the Luapula 
 swept a fearful flood into the Lake, the water rising so 
 high that it leapt the low ridge of hills at the South 
 end, drowning the inhabitants and roaring out its shame 
 into the basin of this future Lake. Thus Mweru paid 
 for it all in creating a small rival, the assuaging waters, 
 land-choked, being, so to put it, forced to open shop 
 as a private firm, Mary Lake the new signboard. 
 Signboard, I mean in the literal sense, for half-way 
 on into the Lake we sighted a giant tree of dense 
 foliage, and there in the bark we cut out the four 
 letters of the new name, a memorial to all generations. 
 Pushing on now, we breast its low girding hills, and 
 liere is the real thing at last, a wide world of water. 
 Known to the mob as Mweru, this Lake really boasts of 
 the " boa-constrictor " title " Mwerumukatamuvundanshe," 
 for in Africa must not a big thing have a big name ? 
 
 We billeted at a fishing kraal, an aged, ill-smelling 
 place, owned \hj an aged, ill-smelling man, the person 
 probably Shakespeare described as having " a very ancient, 
 fish-like smell." Shook his head a hundred times before 
 I was done with him : could not make me out at all 
 at all, and seemed very sure I was as bad as mad. 
 Nevertheless, his heart was better than his head, for 
 in order that his hospitality might incur no reproach 
 
"GREAT WHITE LAKE " 397 
 
 he presented me with two fowls — two formidably fat 
 fowls, and may I be as fit to die as they were. The 
 dear old Gospel had a poor reception — rousing rejection 
 rather. Told him I had come to allure to brighter 
 worlds and lead the way, and he hinted that I might 
 take my way and clear, then his, oh ! his would be a 
 brighter world. The question is a fair one whether 
 I did not antagonise my old friend with a too abrupt 
 mode of preaching and failure to polish down the 
 asperities of speech. We live and we learn, I trust, 
 and the greatest of all lessons in Africa is wisdom to 
 adapt the "how" to the "when." Alas, as you will 
 see, subsequent complications proved too sadly that he 
 had every right not merely to snarl at but to shoot 
 me. And thereby hangs my tale. 
 
 As though divining my thoughts, this old man 
 turned the tables by starting the oldest wrangle in 
 Africa — given canoes hidden in the reeds, and an 
 impatient traveller, to find the "how" and the "when" 
 of your voyage. 
 
 All my men, poor landlubbers from the Western 
 plains, refuse resolutely even to think this trans-Lake 
 venture. Looking out disconsolate at Mweru, they recall 
 their own Lufira ditch and see here the skies coming 
 down to open and swallow the black specks of canoes. 
 Po pa pera dikumbi they call it, " Where the firma- 
 ment ends," and they argue that if the sky ends there, 
 man must end earlier. " Why, I ask you, by a threefold 
 why (Patatu), should we dare this voyage ? " said one 
 
398 THINKING BLACK 
 
 of these solemn-faced sacrifices about to be offered up. 
 With no book but nature, every little picture is to the 
 negro Christian a parable ; and here again, looking out 
 on this vast expanse of skyline, you get some more of 
 his "thinking black" philosophy. He has been shut 
 in all his life to the plains, never saw such a pitiless 
 waste of waters. He looks, and looks, then a dreamy 
 thought comes into his eye and he sighs, " Ah yes ! 
 what a tragedv that we humans can see far farther than 
 we can walk ! " In other words — how little our life agrees 
 with our lip ! How little our word squares with our deed ! 
 To top all my trouble, yonder is Kilwa Island lying 
 off in mid-Lake, the robber's den from which this Arab 
 Shimba launches his bolts. Darting about like black 
 ducks, you can see his scout-canoes patrolling the Lake, 
 and the problem now stands how to slip past these 
 lynx-eyed blacks and cross Mweru. The very dirt on 
 my calico coat (a thing my boy tailored for me) is now 
 a boon, for one startling speck of white in a canoe 
 would tell tales. Remember, we have Arabs behind us 
 as well as Arabs in front, and, as Lord Macaulay puts 
 it, " Those behind cry ' Forward,' and those in front 
 cry 'Back.'" Therefore, on we agree to go, and God 
 be with us on the waters ! 
 
 Dawn of the 4th of July saw us shooting out into 
 the hot and oily waters of an uncharted sea, Mweru 
 at this end describing many strange curvatures quite 
 unknown to the R.G.S. Capes, bays, and deltas all 
 foreign to the map, yet old-fashioned enough to the 
 
"GREAT WHITE LAKE " 399 
 
 negroes. My cook can turn a phrase as neatly as he 
 turns a pancake, and on taking in this vastitude of 
 skyline he said, " Who ever fought successfully with 
 God ? He killeth even aristocrats." Yesterday we were 
 in the grips of revolt — no, never, never more to agree. 
 Here we are to-day kinsmen dear, bound in the common 
 bond of fear that the Arabs may nab us. I felt then 
 more than I had ever felt before the essential kinship 
 of men. Clouds of water-fowl rose on our approach, so 
 dense that blindly banging with a No. 12 we bring 
 them down freely. A spur-wing goose so falling nearly 
 killed one of my men, the point of spur being a terrible 
 dagger, and quite serious enough to brain a black at one 
 blow. The estuaries, however, are the certain postal 
 address of Mweru birds of every hue, and from far 
 and near the congeries flock to a glorious dress parade. 
 To commit that bit of bright-coloured scenery to paper 
 would be impossible, the thing is all too grand and 
 elusive. Pelicans, grey, white, and salmon-pink wuth 
 yellow pouches — as serious as a sermon; whistling tree- 
 ducks, black and white, zebra-barred and chestnut ; dainty 
 lily-trotters, black and white, golden yellow, chocolate 
 brown ; bronze-green cormorants and black darters ; 
 kingfishers, crowned cranes, curlews, sandpipers. Ibis 
 religiosa, spur-winged plovers with yellow wattles, black 
 water-rails with lemon beaks and white pencillings ; 
 herons galore, large grey herons, purple slate ditto, 
 Goliath ditto. Last, not least — yea, king of all, the rosy 
 flamingo, rare as royal, and peeping selectly out above 
 
400 THINKING BLACK 
 
 the papyrus. One of these birds I cannot place, Nseva 
 they call it, and they flock so thickly that they are 
 a proverb for a united phalanx of patriots. Runic rhyme 
 this proverb, and Englished thus : — 
 
 "A thousand Nseva rise at once, 
 Each one refusing precedence." 
 
 Any one of an arithmetical turn of mind, I invite to 
 consider carefully the following figures indicative of the 
 thickness of this flock — at one bang 114 (one hundred 
 and fourteen) fell to the right barrel of a Greener. 
 
 Most wonderful of all, some far-travelled storks are 
 there, daring birds that have shot far down from the 
 North : — 
 
 " Wild birds that change 
 Their season in the night, and wail their way 
 From cloud to cloud down the long wind." 
 
 Feeding on snakes, frogs, and fish as staple diet, the long 
 Southward journey gives them an en route chance of a 
 crab here, a shrimp there. In hard times, where sterile 
 stretches of desert must be crossed, their crop and stomach 
 are crammed full of shells. It would seem a wild ex- 
 aggeration to suggest that these storks ever saw Egypt, 
 but not far East from here the whole truth of migration 
 came out. True, a bird cannot talk, but what if one day it 
 brings a letter, to wit, a light metal ring bearing a number 
 and date fastened to one leg ? And what if the said 
 ring proclaims the said stork to have been liberated away 
 up in North Germany ? The ounce of avoirdupois fact 
 
"GREAT WHITE LAKE" 401 
 
 contained in this metallic message danglmg from the dead 
 stork's leg is surely worth the ton of scientific fiction 
 written on this subject of migratory birds — yes, Prussia 
 is the name on the ring, and 5th July the date thereof 
 There is another link, too, in this story, and that im- 
 mensely important as indicating the actual stork-route 
 into Africa. For, be it known, this stork had a brother- 
 bird released from Northern Germany in the same July 
 with the same metallic data. But he, poor bird, is not 
 made of steel and was shot in Tunis, just as he was 
 entering on the Great African panorama — a needless 
 death seemingly, yet how necessary as a link in our chart 
 of bird-migration ! For here we see what really happened. 
 Sailing South out of Prussia, full speed ahead, over Bavaria 
 they go, over the Lake of Constance, South, ever South, 
 until the Alps are cleared. Leaving the Adriatic far on 
 the left, down into Lombardy they dart, right over 
 Florence and out into the Mediterranean with stately 
 beating pinions. Africa is now ahead, the land of sun, 
 sand, and surprises beckoning them on, but Tunis sees the 
 death of Stork No. 1. (Alas, man and stork alike, how 
 often, Africa, hast thou killed a new arrival with one 
 such brutal knock-down blow ! ) But Stork No. 2 knows a 
 thing or two, and he plans a route far from gunshot 
 range ; nothing less than the taking of Africa in its 
 longitudinal length, and sailing serenely down the middle. 
 Not many shot-guns there, quoth Mr. Stork. So there 
 he starts on his long African journey, fifty solid degrees 
 of latitude ahead. Out of Europe into Tripoli, out of 
 
402 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Tripoli into the Libyan desert : sand, only sand, rolling 
 like a sea ; sun, only sun, parching and pitiless. Think, 
 now, this weary Libyan, the only water in wells, and the 
 only wells far and farther between. Think, more desert 
 and vaster, for now he enters the Sahara, where enemies 
 of the air be^in as well as enemies of sun and thirst. 
 But still he sails on, sleeping in a salt marsh one night, 
 roosting up a yellow acacia tree the next ; but oh, what 
 joy when he reaches a lake ! So fond of a bath is the 
 good fellow, he sometimes goes to sleep up to his knees in 
 water ; in high icy lands they are often taken out in the 
 mornino;. frozen in all nig;ht. Still South to the sun he 
 comes, crossino: over a branch of the Nile and sailing over 
 the pigmy forest ; but we are all pigmies to Master Stork, 
 so high in the air is he, so low down are we. And now 
 he is nearing us, for away to the East he can spy the blue 
 Tanganyika, while to the West the great Congo twists 
 and turns like a great water-snake. Through these two 
 he comes, and away far below he can see a curl of blue 
 smoke from a passing village ; sometimes spies a group of 
 hunters out in the wilds cutting up game ; sometimes, too, 
 he sees a lion kill a zebra. And now here is another 
 expanse of blue stretching out to receive him, for what 
 is this but old Mweru with our chimney smoking 
 away on the Luanza cliff? But the end is not yet. 
 Veering S.E., he heads for his doom, and one crack 
 from a shot-gun ends it all, life's panorama done for ever 
 — story ended, stork ended in a flutter of flying feathers 
 thus !!!!!!!!!! 
 
"GREAT WHITE LAKE " 403 
 
 But let us continue our voyage. Gliding past 
 these birds, a huge aviary that beggars all description, 
 on and on we fare ; then somebody spies certain 
 suspicious specks of black far out to sea — Shimba's 
 scouts, probably. At this point there is much ambiguous 
 whispering, then a mild mutiny breaks out as to whether 
 we dare push on. Ten, twenty, and thirty minutes pass, 
 and now the black hulls of the canoes are seen bearing 
 down on us for all the world like tiny torpedo-boats : the 
 leading log makes straight for my boat, a miniature 
 replica of the old sailor's print of the Arethusa bearing 
 up to engage the Belle Poule. But it is a mere scare : 
 these are Arab scouts who sail up quite close, offering the 
 Fontenoy privilege of first shot, then, having verified 
 who and where we are, away they dart back to report at 
 headquarters in the island. The result of that encounter 
 was as sad and sorry a thing for me as could well happen. 
 For when Shimba saw that we had given him the slip he 
 swore a sudden vengeance, put to sea with a flotilla of 
 dug-outs, cut across Lake to my old fisher-friend who 
 grudgingly gave me the canoes yesterday, burned his 
 village to the ground and dragged him off in chains. 
 Not much cause for congratulation here : my visit has 
 been a visitation — see, away in the distance the village 
 in flames ! Can you wonder at that old man for years 
 and years shooting an envenomed glance at the very 
 mention of my name ? What a monstrous enigma it 
 must have seemed to him, my preaching of peace and 
 claiming to be an ambassador thereof, whereas the net 
 
404 THINKING BLACK 
 
 amount of peace we brought to that poor town was — fire 
 and sword, and the old patriarch dragged off in chains. 
 True, we had outwitted Shimba, but what a fly in the 
 ointment ! 
 
 Happily, this cut-throat soon finds out he has gone 
 a little too far, for an escaped fisherman runs away 
 West with the tidings, and after nearly a week's journey 
 bursts in on the Belgian Fort with a haggard and agonised 
 look to tell the tale. Now it is Commandant Verdickt 
 dares a deed that proves him to be the bravest of the 
 brave. Following in our wake, he strikes the Lake at 
 the same South end, crosses over to Kilwa Island in 
 crazy canoes with a handful of men, and dares to try 
 to carry the Arabs' stone fort by storm. Forlorn hope ! 
 Himself in loud white jacket, a target for the elephant- 
 hunters, one of his traitor soldiers dares to wipe off an 
 old score with his own corporal, killing him from the 
 rear. This means, of course, a pitiful stampede, and 
 poor Verdickt, after living a charmed life, is nearly 
 drowned on the return journey. But the veil that 
 hides the future in Africa is indeed woven by the hand 
 of mercy, for had we known, dared we move ? The 
 way of man is not in himself, and here is our harmless 
 little journey spelling out blood, blood, and yet more 
 blood. 
 
 On and on we sail, blissfully ignorant of it all, our 
 second day on the Lake giving promise of surprises. 
 The old canoe-man is a marvel, talking all the way 
 pettingly to his log ; calling it by its baptismal name, 
 
"GREAT WHITE LAKE " 405 
 
 and forbidding any man aboard to whistle, lest he 
 bring the wind. The poise of this paddler is a marvel, 
 his stroke so rhythmic and sure that he can carry on 
 for hours without making a false move. Late in 
 the afternoon we see symptoms of approach to land ; 
 not mainland, however, but rather a large unknown 
 island answering to the terse euphonious name of 
 "Tangled Isle" (Disohive). Beyond this we sight the 
 real East shore, finally grounding among the reeds at 
 Lukanga. Stiff as buckram, we spring out of our 
 cramped-up canoes, and fall into Livingstone's old trail 
 when he came up to see Mwonga : the Doctor's compass 
 and watch survey is delightfully accurate ; has a look 
 of plod about it. Heading North towards Kalungwizi, 
 we foot it many a weary mile. Then one glad day I 
 hear the tootling of an old cracked bugle, and, at last, 
 through the trees, across the flashing water, behold, 
 a bunch of ribbons, once the dear Jack of Old England ! 
 All that follows in quick delirious succession is marked 
 on my mind with vivid distinctness, a memory for life. 
 Run down the slope with the innocent joy-bells of my 
 heart ringing, and drop into a canoe : far too excitedly, 
 though, for we get nearly drowned in the turbulent 
 crossing. Then, as in a dream, a white man, eyes dancing 
 with delight, grips my hand, and we can scarcely utter 
 a word — he from the Indian Ocean and I from the 
 Atlantic. Thus West and East join hands. This, be 
 it known, is one Bainbridge vice Kidd, who died before 
 my arrival — the same poor Bainbridge who was to die a 
 
406 THINKING BLACK 
 
 few days after I left him. With all our many months' 
 hoardings of enforced reticence, did we sleep that night ? 
 No ! we talked the sun up. Sittingr inside the snuo- 
 
 J- o o 
 
 bastions of the Fort, the soldiers bring a pile of faggots, 
 and there we splice the two ends of our East and West 
 cables, comparing notes. Only representative of his 
 Queen, there he is, day by day, looking off into our 
 wild unknown Interior, two big business-looking revolvers 
 ever lying on his table, and full of forebodings. Gazing 
 moodily over at our terra incognita, little does he guess 
 I am " boring out " to join him. 
 
 A few weeks ago his chief had been buried in the 
 grave hard by our fire, and — he is to follow suit in a 
 week. The poor fellow pours out his soul into the night ; 
 for, burdened with responsibility, he is now a miniature 
 edition of Great Britain in breeches, the death sentence 
 in his power, and he too, alas ! in the power of the death 
 sentence. Kinder to me than a kinsman dear, he — the 
 same man who in England would have treated me to 
 d stony British stare — he, even he, had mercy on my 
 limping along in old slippers in the rain. Gave me a 
 shirt, gave me hose, gave me medicines. Miniature 
 edition of Great Britain indeed, he not only represented 
 England's Army and Navy, but, quite unconscious of 
 the inroads I was making on his slender stock of supplies, 
 I fear I treated him as though he were an agent of the 
 other Army and Navy — Victoria Street ! 
 
 But it is only past midnight under the solemn stars 
 you get past the outer fringe of tilings, right home to 
 
"GREAT WHITE LAKE" 407 
 
 the soul of a man. Loneliness is at his heart like a 
 knife, and now is the time to push the right royal claims 
 of the Lord Jesus Christ. Far too long have good folks 
 in England sheered oflf delicately when these subjects 
 are approached, but only by facing them can we con- 
 ceive what a trap Africa is to a newcomer. Arriving as 
 many young men do in this land wholly unawakened 
 to the graver issues of life, the first glance they get 
 amounts to a moral slap in the face. Perchance even 
 the scarce Missionary he meets is of a sour, mournful 
 type, who has missed a glorious deed of helping this 
 newcomer. Too often it is a fact that this Africa robs 
 a Christian man of his victor's song and leaves him a 
 broken-spirited jumble of distraction. But the fact is, a 
 mere Missionary in Africa is lost in its vast mileage, 
 a poor pin-point in the immensity, and the lonely 
 Europeans are long miles apart. Then he wakens up 
 to find what an elegant fiction is that loose talk in 
 England about the joys and manliness of a " man being 
 alone on his own feet." Fleeing from cities and the 
 "fight for bread" of congested towns, he soon discovers 
 the value of dear old English ways. Even the starchy 
 fads of fashion are seen in a new and almost favourable 
 light. At sundown his thoughts, like homing pigeons, 
 travel fast and far across the seas to his native land. 
 He dreams of the old dainties and decencies of life 
 and longs to be there. He drops that nonsense about 
 a clerk in an English office being " chained to his oar-pen 
 like a galley-slave." Finally and comprehensively he 
 
408 THINKING BLACK 
 
 sums up a hundred African needs in the dear old phrase, 
 " the thin crust of conventionality," Then it is England's 
 boy shrinks suddenly into himself, the awakening being 
 rude and poignant. Nor dare a Missionary, who serves 
 the God Whose name is Jealous, be silent, for He hath 
 cursed the man who " winketh with the eye." Gentle- 
 men, to ignore is to wink, and thus to palliate, so 
 "suffer the word of exhortation." 
 
» 
 
 CHAPTEK XXI 
 A Page of History 
 
" Father Nile presents his compliments . . . and 
 begs leave to inform the world that the Father, at 
 the suggestion of the Reverend David Livingstone, 
 has removed his head-quarters to a delightful region 
 [Lake Mweru] about eleven degrees South of the 
 Equator, or Equinoxious line, where for the present 
 he is to be found by his friends. Carriages to set 
 down at Cazembe, a couple of hundred miles or so 
 South of Burton's Lake Tanganyika. N.B. You are 
 heartily welcome to any refreshments which you may 
 bring with you. Niggers about here don't need to 
 
 be shot." Mr. Punch, 1869. 
 
 "Cartographers in Afric's maps 
 With savage pictures fill the gaps. 
 And o'er the inhospitable downs 
 Place elephants instead of towns." 
 
 410 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 A Page of History 
 
 TyT/" HSR SIN the reader, now in 
 glimmer now in gloom, watches 
 these negroes work out their destiny in the 
 darkness. 
 
 AND now, having " bored " out East, let us take our 
 bearings : where are we ? 
 
 In this all-encompassing gloom it is vital that 
 you fasten on one fact : by so reaching the shores of Lake 
 Mweru, we now see a faint streak of light shooting up 
 from Lake Nyassa and along the Tanganyika plateau. 
 Like a beacon light visible at sea from far, we strain our 
 gaze towards Nyassa, gladdened to know that yonder is 
 God's lighthouse of Livingstonia, shining true. And 
 lighthouse, remember, is the true metaphor to symbolise 
 Dr. Laws' work out there ; lighthouses do not ring bells 
 and fire cannon to call attention to their shining, they 
 just shine on. Likewise Livingstonia. Nor are our 
 Eastern hopes futile. For many a day that transport 
 link with Chinde succours us, albeit the real route of the 
 far future is due South to the Cape. 
 
 411 
 
412 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Will my good-natured reader again let me write in 
 the first person singular ? for the next link in our story 
 is the day when we came round the North shore, a 
 white man and a handful of blacks. The date is 
 November, 1893. We have crossed the Lake in canoes 
 and are now heading back Westward, seeking for a 
 Mission site on the Eastern edge of our Garenganze 
 country. My crew and I go to sleep curled up on the 
 sand of the North shore of Lake Mweru : that is to say, 
 when sleep comes our way. In the white horses roll 
 foaming, almost getting at us, and the African lets a 
 long-tongued flame from the faggots lick his skin. As 
 the wind increases its whistle, each of the fisher-lads 
 quietly scoops a grave of dry sand into which he de- 
 scends, sweeping back a few inches depth of sand by way 
 of blanketing. Huddled thus all in a heap, oh the 
 confidential chats we have ! Natives, I find, like you to 
 poke into their little histories, and generally the most 
 ordinary-looking little boy has a career of crosses. One 
 lad of sixteen said that when a boy he used to hear of 
 God far East among the Romanists, but his family 
 crossed into English land, and, said the boy, " Who ever 
 heard of God among the English ? " But against this put 
 the remark of a young Roman Catholic pupil as he pointed 
 to his brass crucifix : " Yes, I wear God round my neck." 
 Our appeal to a man to break with the dark tribal past 
 only evoked a song about potatoes, which I construed as 
 indiff'erence. On reducing the song to writing, however, 
 it was not noisy, empty doggerel, but a preaching parable 
 
LUANZA 
 
 The Mission Town built on the Cliff 
 overhanging Lake Mweru. 
 
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 A PAGE OF HISTORY 413 
 
 of my appeal. Said the song : " Lombe, you remember, 
 introduced potatoes, and what was reckoned poison is now 
 staple diet." This is their way of expressing my desire. 
 Yes, they treat the Gospel as though it would poison 
 them ! But who would have guessed that a man singing 
 about potatoes was really pleading for an acceptance of 
 the Gospel? By the by, this mention of diet reminds 
 me of the curious tendency in Africa to enter a long spell 
 of monotony in one kind of food. In the mountains you 
 are dosed with honey, and in the plains the everlasting 
 fowl is your fare right round the clock — just a little too 
 much of toujours perdrix. So, too, on the Lake here, it 
 is fish, and fish, and more fish : — 
 
 "A paddle, a row or sail, 
 With always a fish for a midday meal, 
 And plenty of Adam's ale." 
 
 Finally, on the North-West shore, near Luanza, we 
 made a find of a charming slice of English-looking 
 territory, the Chief coming up with a red fez stuck 
 impudently on his head, and claiming proprietary rights 
 to the soil. He might have been a Duke of twenty 
 descents, so tall his talk, so short his stature. Well, 
 after long hours of the old parrot cry of " property in 
 danger," we finally settled the meum and tuum of the 
 thing, and next day was appointed for the delivery of the 
 titles. This curious ceremony opened with the angry 
 roar of the Chiefs drums that lent themselves to anything 
 but dulcet harmonies ; then we all crossed the boundary 
 brook and climbed the blufi", a great ring of roaring 
 
414 THINKING BLACK 
 
 blacks being now formed round a noble tree — " the tree of 
 witness " this was called. Here the Chief, nodding affably 
 to me, stepped out into the centre of the ring and asked 
 me to join him in the " signing of the title-deeds." For 
 all I could guess from this ring it might have been a 
 prize fight that was planned : can it really be, thought I, 
 that instead of settling the matter in black and white, it 
 has to be finished in black and blue ? As matters turned 
 out, however, our conveyancing ink was Napoleon's kind 
 — gunpowder. For, cutting out a large square on the tree, 
 the Chief called on me to fire a bullet into the mark ; then, 
 with an air of amused paternity, he, with a bang, planted 
 his copper bullet alongside my lead one. So there it was, 
 " signed, sealed, and delivered," the living tree carrying in 
 its bosom the two " witness-bullets," the human ring 
 round it a warning to all men that this tree was invio- 
 late from the woodman's axe. Postal address : Luanza, 
 Lake Mweru via Chinde. The clifi" risino: sheer from the 
 blue Lake, a narrow ledge of flat land for our township, 
 the Bukonojolo Range wallino; the town hiofh at the back 
 and sheltering it from the wild west winds, that is 
 Luanza. The other day, when the present King Albert 
 of Belgium came along, we sat on the cliff* verandah look- 
 ins; across to the far British shore, and I asked him what 
 he thought of our outlook. " Oh," said he, " here I sit 
 imagining myself at Folkestone looking over at Calais." 
 
 4{. 4£, ^C, 
 
 W -^ ^ 
 
 Here it is, then, on this bluff" overhanging Mweru, we 
 settle down in the dark to hold on to the country — motto : 
 
A PAGE OF HISTORY 415 
 
 Work, wait, and win/ To " pioneer," I know, is a word as 
 much abused as used, but note what it means to us here. 
 The Arabs have wiped off all the hamlets from the map 
 and driven the Shila folks to the caves in the Bukongolo 
 Range — problem : pioneer a population first of all. Kuva, 
 the Lord Paramount, owing to the stress of war, is hiding 
 away somewhere in the rocks of Bukongolo, and we must 
 fish him out of his cave — problem : pioneer a kingship in 
 our need. Here, too, on the cliff there is no trace of 
 a village, everything swept before the Arab bands of 
 raiders — problem : pioneer a township. Nor hut nor 
 tent have I — problem : pioneer a house. Nor food nor 
 vegetables nor fruit — problem : pioneer a garden and 
 orchard. Nor book nor written speech have they — 
 problem : pioneer a literature. Etcetera, etcetera. This 
 " etc. etc." representing the needle-to-the-anchor kind of 
 business in which you are a jack-of-all-trades and very 
 particularly master of none. Too many irons in the fire, 
 no doubt, but in they go — shovel, tongs, poker and all. 
 We did not come out here to eat bananas, and these are 
 the words I wrote in chalk on the first mud walls of my 
 pioneer cabin — 
 
 " The compass was not invented by an astronomer. 
 Nor the microscope by a natural philosopher, 
 Nor the printing press by a man of letters, 
 Nor gunpowder by a soldier." 
 
 1 The first to rally to our help at Luanza was Mr. Campbell from the 
 West, then Messrs. Arnot and Cobbe from the East. Next came the first 
 lady who ever penetrated these wilds, Mrs. Crawford, her party including 
 Messrs. Gammon, George, and Pomeroy. After this came the " John Wilson " 
 
416 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Quite a cheery reflection this for Mr. Robinson Crusoe 
 Africanus. 
 
 * * * 
 
 But who said it was four thousand miles to Old 
 England ? Mocking at mere mileage, there goes the 
 homely tapping of a woodpecker, each warm-hearted tap ! 
 tap ! tap ! hinting that round the next bend of the Lake 
 the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland may 
 come into full view. Nor is this all. Flir-r-r ! goes a 
 covey of red-legged partridges trying on the same happy 
 hoax, the very birds apologising for the long lapse in 
 letters, and sending us these home-felt sights and sounds 
 of theirs as substitute. The poor little Mission garden 
 is also a policy of make-believe, and resembles Stevens' 
 Indian one, the most pathetic thing in a whole land of 
 exile. The native trees and shrubs and plants with 
 huge leaves flourish rankly. But the poor little home 
 flowers, the stocks and mignonette and wallflowers ! 
 They struggle so gallantly (like the Mission lady and 
 Mission baby) to persuade you that this is not so very 
 far from England, and they fail so piteously. They will 
 flower in abundant but straggling blossoms, but the fierce 
 sun withers the first before the next have more than 
 budded. It is a loving fraud, but a hollow one. The 
 very wallflowers cannot be more than exiles. Yet here 
 in this affectation of a garden you have the pulse of the 
 
 party, tte only remaining member of which is Mr. Higgins. Tlien don't 
 forget Miss Jordon ! Both winning and wise, Mr. and Mrs. Higgins have 
 held on all these years without release, the last stop-press news being that 
 their far-off Luanza lionse has gone up in smoke. 
 
A PAGE OF HISTORY 417 
 
 whole African puzzle. For granted you battle with and 
 win a feeble flower from the silly soil, where is the 
 perfume ? And precisely as you sniff in vain for the old 
 whiff of the mignonette, even so with the emigrant English- 
 man. He too loses his bloom and fragrance, and Africa 
 soon robs him of his genial smile. But he that hath 
 ears to hear can get a thousand such sermons all over 
 Africa, and every day. For instance, learn a parable of 
 the fig tree. Glance at those Mission doors, a pioneer 
 effort in carpentry. The good fellow made a dive into 
 the adjoining jungle, and after felling a fig tree he 
 laboriously ripped the planks for his first doors and 
 tables. The which is a perfect j^arable. For that wood 
 was as green as the Missionary who cut it, and after a 
 few months those tightly fitting boards, so full of sap, 
 shrank into yawning cracks, a sorrow and an eyesore. 
 How like the fresh young Missionary, the first year how 
 neat and trig ; the second, how warped and shrunken ! 
 For as long as sap is sap and sun is sun, the latter will 
 soon suck up the former, and the Mission door will be 
 like the Missionary who made it. Learn, therefore, a 
 parable of that fig tree. When its branch is yet young 
 and tender, and shooteth forth its leaves, then ye know — 
 that it is not the time to make doors and tables ! Their 
 very word for "leaves" has a Biblical ring in it. It 
 means " the tellers," the idea being that they mark the 
 change of seasons, and all appeal to the leaves, i.e. " the 
 tellers," as proof positive that the season has changed. 
 Thus the phrase, " When ye see the leaves then ye 
 
418 THINKING BLACK 
 
 know that summer is nigb," is as African as it is 
 Biblical. 
 
 Nowadays we are all better off and dine on a better 
 diet — better off, yes, but are we better? Sharp is the 
 contrast between a London "slummer" and the modern 
 African Missionary on his highly respectable station. 
 Pause half a moment and consider. Note this curious 
 new word "Station" we begin to use in Africa, a new 
 word for a distinctly new idea. You will search the 
 dictionary in vain for its meaning, and the Acts of the 
 Apostles too. Yet this term can with special fitness 
 stand for the idea, because this is the thing that anchors 
 the Missionary. Not a sheep-run nor a railway station, 
 but a Mission Station — in a word, an isolated estate 
 some hundreds of yards or acres square on which the 
 Missionary lives as magnate of the district. Station in 
 name and station in nature is such a place, for it forces 
 the preacher to be as stationary as his station : the native 
 must come to the Missionary, and not the Apostolic 
 contrary. And what if this lightly-come lightly-go negro 
 runs off seeking pastures new ? How can the stationm'y 
 Missionary follow him? The danger is that in this 
 Africa ever on the move, this Africa peopled by roaming 
 tribes, the natives spasmodically scratch the soil in one 
 valley for three or four years and then flit to new districts 
 for new fields. Remember rural Africa cannot boast one 
 plough, only hoes ; and this is fatal to fixed population. 
 He only scratches the soil and then moves on ; not one 
 of them will play the man and dig deep. Nor has he 
 
A PAGE OF HISTORY 419 
 
 any coal, only forest faggots, and these he soon runs 
 through, owing to his deforestation for corn-growing. 
 Here, then, in lack of firewood we see another factor 
 driving him on. Face this moving-on problem. 
 
 Up go the stately buildings of the white man and 
 down go the mud huts of his black neighbour. No. 1 
 just getting in as No. 2 is moving out. Alone the 
 Missionary finds himself, the clannish coalescence of his 
 parishioners outwitting his plans. Leading up to this 
 point, all has been hypocritical silence, and the foreigner 
 with innocent serenity thinks his black neighbours are 
 a fixture, so he settles down to build, which also, alas ! 
 means building to settle down. " Strangers and pil- 
 grims," yes ; but the Devil has all the pilgrims and Christ 
 all the strangers, for we saints are anchored with 
 impedimenta when the sinners — the natives — are up and 
 away. There on the off-bank of a brawling stream you 
 have the pi'O tern, native village only a few thousand 
 yards distant in measure but many thousand miles in 
 mind and manners. Behold the grotesque contradiction 
 of the thing ! — a middle-class Missionary acclaimed as the 
 local Carnegie, staggering rich, no poverty of the Cross, 
 no stigma of shame, but contrariwise a grovelling negro 
 lauding him as lord and master — a poor enough start for 
 the dear old Gospel. So very much is the African a 
 servant of servants that he outwits the Missionary, who 
 should be a servant of all ; and here in this initial wrong 
 Christ is wounded in the house of His friends, Christianity 
 equating wealth, not poverty. Bring the African to book 
 
420 THINKING BLACK 
 
 on this subject, call it all a blinding delusion, tell him 
 you are really as poor as he thinks you are rich ; I say, 
 tell him this, and into that negro eye of his comes a 
 magpie gleam accusing you of mendacity. To split a 
 hair on the difiference between real and relative riches is, 
 to the naked negro, an unworthy juggling with words — 
 are we not " the people of God," and does not the very 
 name of the Creator mean greatness and prestige in local 
 lingo ? 
 
 W TV* 
 
 But let us look at our Lake now. For six months 
 in the year there is a South-Wester thundering in 
 on our shore, a wind adversely in the teeth of our 
 schooner ^ when travelling up-Lake. Beginning in April 
 and blowing through the dry season, the monsoon is 
 so distinctly rainless that the season commonly takes its 
 name from it. A good guess at Meteorology this, for, 
 blowing over the highlands of the Transvaal as it 
 does, where could it get rain from ? The commence- 
 ment of rains coincides with the change of monsoon. 
 A deterrent on the water, this same wdnd is a saving 
 boon on land, blowing; in on us on the bluff when the 
 heat is at its height. Not the wild salt winds of the sea 
 with famous curative virtues — oh no ! — for when a man 
 has incipient fever they strike a chill to his marrow, 
 generally bringing the attack to a head. Towards 
 October we approach the change of seasons, when we 
 
 1 Well done, Greenock ! Across sea and land loyal hearts sent that 
 splendid iron boat, and for years it was indispensable. 
 
A PAGE OF HISTORY 421 
 
 have our greatest meteorological disturbances on the 
 Lake, and on the cliff at Luanza we need all the hold 
 we have of the rock, the wind heralding torrential rains 
 sweeping down the gorges in wild rugging gusts. Look- 
 ing out to the Lake, you can descry a hardy fisherman 
 nursing his "dug-out" in a grey, cruel sea: exactly the 
 opposite of the old Francis Drake style, these canoes 
 have high viking prows, and sterns almost flush with 
 the water. He has christened his log by a lucky name, 
 and when far out, talks pettingly to the boat as his own 
 familiar friend. Transacting, as he thus does, in honest 
 ways, the honest business of a fisherman, it is a pity 
 he spoils it all by a curious mid-Lake ceremony called 
 "the cursing." What this amounts to is bluntly a fierce 
 cataract of oaths in which he apostrophises all the dead 
 men in the Lake. Singling them out by name, he curses 
 them with all the gall and bitterness of a presumably 
 doomed man — the presumption being that, all alone as 
 he is in far mid-Lake, the dead men will drag him down 
 to the deep. Then there is a pause, but the stubborn 
 silence of the Lake only stiff"ens him in his resolve to 
 keep cursing. Making a clean circle of the Lake hamlets, 
 he challenges all the dead chiefs by name, the volley 
 of oaths [Mafinge) being to the accompaniment of a 
 curious rat-a-tat noise he makes with a drumstick on 
 the side of the boat. The livelier the fish rug at his 
 two long lines tied to his two great toes, the louder do 
 these curses rend the air. Sure, if ever food needed to 
 be " sanctified by prayer," these fish, the fruit of cursing, 
 
422 THINKING BLACK 
 
 deserve a purifying *' grace before meat " ! Yet what 
 shall we see the great Kazembe do with these very fish ? 
 Will he, too, not dine to a cataract of curses ? — the very 
 fish cursed in their catching being again cursed in their 
 cooking. 
 
 But here, incredulous as it may seem, the wheel goes 
 full circle once again, and the erstwhile curser can now be 
 heard singing a solemn Te Deum. Yet this fisherman, 
 remember, claims he is only cursing demons, for forthwith 
 with the same mouth blesses he God. Certain it is that 
 for centuries this quaint old song of deliverance has been 
 sung as a cast-iron formula by all Shila men who were 
 capsized but came safe to land. Greeting him with song at 
 the Njiko, or landing-place, all the women-folk burst out 
 into a " God-song," as it is called, the escaped fisherman 
 joining them in the chorus. Simple enough in its diction, 
 the whole value of this praise-song is to be found in its 
 archaic terminology, the very grammar of the thing being 
 steeped in most ancient twang : — 
 
 "O God, the minnows 
 
 Had nigh feasted on me ; 
 But Thou, O God, 
 Didst rescue me ! " 
 
 Then, when the " praise procession " reaches the hamlet, 
 first among all his treasures to be produced is the oreat 
 " horn of salvation," as it is called, a horn this crammed 
 full of charms, and in symbolic idea a real cornucopia. 
 All life's successes are ascribed to its mediation, and the 
 " horn is exalted" accordingly. This song of deliverance 
 
A PAGE OF HISTORY 423 
 
 idea, remember, is not peculiar to one tribe only, for the 
 very vilest type of cut-throat negro does the same thing. 
 The infamous Rugaruga, for instance, whose very name on 
 the Lake became, as we have seen, the verb to murder 
 and loot, these too have a cast-iron formula of " God's 
 thanks" when they escape in war. Say a bullet whizzes 
 past his ear, and at once, conscious of having been saved 
 from death, he interjects the ancient prayer : " God, 
 my Deliverer, never again will I revile Thee ! " Not a 
 chance idea this, please note, but a technical prayer, 
 proving once more that God hath not left Himself without 
 a witness, even in the darkest hour of a dark land. Right 
 in from the far Ocean, piercing the darkest hole of Africa 
 with a shaft of light, is this all-pervading knowledge of 
 God-Creator. 
 
 Without labouring the point, I have already urged 
 that the most obdurately deaf negro (deaf to your 
 entreaties, I mean) would resent with extreme asperity 
 any notion that he denied the immortality of the soul : 
 that is not arguable. Let me prove this by describing one 
 memorable meeting I held in that same Kalamata's town 
 among the cannibals, a meeting held on the day subsequent 
 to my seeing a man eating human flesh. You wonder lioiv 
 these hell-hounds can understand the Gospel ; especially if 
 the fugitive preacher has to push on past their place a few 
 miles before his camp for the night is reached. Well, here 
 is a typical meeting on virgin soil, and you, my reader, 
 shall judge whether Paul spake not the truth when he 
 wrote that " God hath not left Himself without witness," 
 
424 THINKING BLACK 
 
 The deep-voiced sycamore-drum calls tliem in, an ugly, 
 verminating throng almost in puris naturalihus — there 
 behold ! the uttermost man in the uttermost parts of 
 the earth. (Yonder, too, on the throne of God, do not 
 forget the Christ Who can save to the uttermost.) Sup- 
 porting me on my near right is the Chief, as Chairman, 
 with whom I propose a loud Socratic dialogue, not as 
 preacher, but merely inquirer, with note-book respectfully 
 open. No skimming, skirting, and shirking of difficulties 
 here ; I simply ask and he simply answers ; why not ? 
 " A big horse takes a big fence," and this big black is on 
 for big business. Note, please, also, that I have given — 
 on the strength of Paul's above-quoted words — the bold 
 initial guarantee that I will neither intrude nor innovate 
 one new-fangled idea in the meeting. The theme for the 
 day is " God ! " and having got a thousand voices to hush 
 the ineffable Name three times, we settle down to Bible- 
 business. Well, to anticipate, it turns out that the 
 subject of our choice is a gold-mine ; not only about God 
 is it but from God too. Asked their name for Him, the 
 answer comes sharp and short from the Chairman-Chief, 
 " Vidie Mukulu," i.e. the great King. And here comes 
 the opening in question No. 2 : " 7ou, the King of these 
 parts, tell me, please, what your kingship involves." 
 Answer — a long string of kingship paraphernalia : Primo, 
 a King has laws ; secundo, a King has a Chipona cha 
 Chidie = ix judgment-seat; tertio, a King has subjects, 
 loyal or rebellious ; quarto, rewards and punishments, 
 and all rebellions quelled within his borders. And now 
 
A PAGE OF HISTORY 425 
 
 comes the Missionary's opening, for bad not a thousand 
 voices, nem. con., dechired that God was the great King 
 (Vidie Muhulu'^)1 Sharp and sudden, you flash in upon 
 them the question, " And so God has all these kingship 
 rights too ? " Now is the momentous moment for the ap- 
 pearance of the Holy Bible. " A King has laws, has he ? 
 Well, here they are, the great King's." " A King crushes 
 rebellion, does he ? " And so on you go, rigorously in- 
 novating n-o-t-h-i-n-g, but merely building on their own 
 adjective "great" governing their own noun "King" — 
 God demonstrated a great King preaching great peace by 
 the great Lord Jesus Christ to His subjects in revolt. Thus 
 out of his own mealy mouth you judge Him a great King ; 
 even to this man-eater postulating a great Judgment-Seat, 
 great Laws, All this, too, far, far in a Central Africa 
 beyond the reach of any Mission by whatsoever name 
 named. How vivid many a Pauline statement becomes ! 
 Pun down the Acts, and note those Apostolic speeches ; 
 to a congregation with its vellum copies of " Prophets and 
 Psalms" these were profusely quoted. But when Paul 
 took his plucky plunge into Gentiledom he ever preached 
 and practised God nigh at hand, God touching their 
 Gentile lives at every point : yea, in God they lived and 
 moved and had their being. Quite a different thing 
 this, remember, from the folly of pretending to preach 
 to the God in a man — how can God be in the soul 
 when Paul says, " At that time ye were without God " ? 
 
 1 This great God-title is most interestingly found even in the far North, 
 beyond the Luban language limit. 
 26 
 
426 THINKING BLACK 
 
 The only God in a negro is the god of this world, the 
 Devil. But look at our blue Lake again. 
 
 To speak of Lake Mweru's "trough" as geographers 
 do of Tanganyika is wrong, for although the Bukongolo 
 Range rises sheer on the West, trenched to a singular 
 degree with brooks and streams, all leaping into the 
 Lake, yet Mweru is not the big evaporation -vat that 
 Tanganyika and every other locked-in lake must be. 
 The Lukuga drainage notwithstanding. Lake Tanganyika 
 water is notoriously nasty. In spite of all that 
 salt, sulphate and carbonate of lime, and sulphate of 
 magnesium dissolved and washed down every year by 
 erosion of water, the whole is soon in motion and joins 
 the Lualaba exit-flow, every cubic foot of water entering 
 at the Southern doorway having to pay toll at the 
 Northern exit. As though guarding this exit doorway, 
 there is a patrol of pugnacious hippos, known familiarly 
 to all natives. The old patriarch of this clan is a dis- 
 agreeable veteran who often lies sunning himself at full 
 length on the flat rock just midway across the Lualaba 
 mouth. He definitely hunts men, and has shivered 
 many a canoe with gusto. The Vasayila, or harpoon- 
 men, have for years exerted all their blandishments on 
 his tough, tight skin, but he has lived to a green old 
 age, rich in honours. Of course, there is sorrow on 
 the Lake, as all the little fishing hamlets know well, 
 and often a dug-out puts out to sea never to come 
 back again, the forementioned ring of hippos having 
 all to do in the matter. For this reason, no native has 
 
A PAGE OF HISTORY 427 
 
 been kuown to cross Mweru direct, all insisting on making 
 the detour round the North end. Along the shores, the 
 canoes dart about like wild-fowl, while far out you can 
 descry an odd, daring Shila man, his dug-out appearing 
 as a dark speck, rising and falling on the crest of the 
 wave. " Nursing " his canoe he calls it, and even in a 
 grey, cruel sea that game of pitch-and-toss he plays with 
 the Lake is a safe thing, even in the angriest storm. 
 Down dips the dug-out into the water-trough, only to 
 reappear riding the wave with the safety of a duck. A 
 mere log, it must mount every wave, nor dare it cleave 
 even one : no wonder, therefore, it curtsies so deeply to 
 the blast out of sheer respect. He is making a try for 
 something good for supper and has, all the w^hile, en- 
 shrined in his vision, the picture of the log-fire with wife 
 and children squatting round. Long before Europe got 
 wind of the idea, these canoes were fitted with invisible 
 marconigram apparatus, for the most tenacious legend 
 of these fishermen is that they are perfectly au courant 
 with their wives' doings at home. This mysterious union 
 is so real that any act of infidelity on her part is doomed 
 to react prejudicially on her fisherman out at sea. Thus 
 all cases of drowning are brought home to the "guid- 
 wife," just as, on the contrary, she accepts with smug 
 complacency the tribute of being the efficient cause of 
 a good haul of fish. For during all the time of her 
 husband's absence in mid-Lake has she not kept the 
 dozen " taboo " rules sacredly ? She dared not, for 
 instance, raise her hand to the shelf in her hut, nor 
 
428 THINKING BLACK 
 
 dared she shake hands with any one. To cook food was 
 also severely taboo during her fisherman's absence, nor 
 could any stranger cross the threshold in his absence. 
 This last custom, indeed, is so rigid that the tribal name 
 is derived therefrom, the fisherman always drawing a 
 circle barrier round his hut to debar entrance in his 
 absence. Hence Shila = to draw a line, from which the 
 in extenso tribal name comes, Vashilanandanediango. 
 Thus the Lake-dwellers boast of a name as long as the 
 Lake's own title. 
 
 Such long names are quite a cartographic curio, and 
 are explained by the Central African idea that as name 
 equates nature, therefore anything big must have a corre- 
 spondingly big name. Hence it is these great Lakes of 
 the Interior all boast long; " boa-constrictor " names 
 unknown to map-makers. For instance, as we have 
 seen, the plain Mweru of the R.G.S. maps is only 
 Mweru in the same short sense as Tom = Thomas, or 
 Will = William, Only, however, in the serious debate of 
 the forensic negro elders can you hear Lake Mweru 
 called by its full-dress name of Miverumukatamuv- 
 undanshe. 
 
 Obviously too big for plain workaday speech, this 
 long comet of a name loses its streaming tail, and brief, 
 blunt Mweru is the normal usage. Nor is this a fancy 
 freak peculiar to one corner only. Take the good Living- 
 stone's own Bangweulu as another example. In his 
 anxiety that people should not call it " Bungy-hollow," 
 he himself was "out" in the spelling of his two final 
 
A PAGE OF HISTORY 429 
 
 vowels. But the important point to note is that even 
 this longish name is only a mere apocope, like its twin- 
 sister Mweru. For the Tom = Thomas analogy is as 
 nothing to the fact that Bangweulu is only the curtate 
 form of the real name, Bangweuluivavikilwanshimango- 
 mwana. If you laugh at the fisher-folk for such a long- 
 winded title, they will quote the proverb, " Big thing, 
 big name." And if you still refuse to bow to the sanity 
 of the idea, they clinch their postulate with the sister- 
 proverb, "Little beef, little juice." Now, although this 
 seems mere black verbosity, these long names are really 
 a philological boon, deciding at a glance the real inner 
 meaning of the Lake's name. A geographer in London 
 without the clue of this full name could toy with his 
 pencil for weeks, trying to solve the meaning of brief 
 " Mweru," and would fail, because the solution is all 
 locked up in this hidden longer name. For instance, 
 the Mweru mouthful, parsed literally, is unerringly 
 rendered " Great-White-Lake-Locust-Drowner " {i.e. too 
 wide an expanse for locusts to dare to try to cross with 
 impunity). So, too, with the geographic mouthful repre- 
 senting the true name of Bangweulu. This only means 
 " The- Lake-so-stormy-that-it-must-be-propitiated-by-the- 
 voyager - and-so-wide - that - you - must - take -pro visions- 
 aboard-for-a-trans-Lake- voyage." So, for orthographical 
 pains you get philological gains, and the names are as 
 easy to parse as they are hard to pronounce. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 Black Man = Black Manners 
 
** The thing that hath been, it is that which shall 
 be : and there is no new thing- under the sun." 
 
 Solomon. 
 
 "When I was a boy in Gaul I beheld the Scots, 
 a people living in Britain, eating human flesh ; and 
 although there were plenty of cattle and sheep at 
 their disposal, yet they would prefer a ham of the 
 herdsman or a slice of female breast." Jerome. 
 
 " For are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians 
 unto Me, O children of Israel ? saith the Lord. " 
 
 Amos. 
 
 4.V.' 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 Black Man = Black Manners 
 
 Jyf 7" HEREIN the reader finds that the 
 African so debases his surround- 
 ings that the surroundings take revenge 
 and debase the African. 
 
 IVORY is pouriDg into the villages, and with it come the 
 fine old fellows who tackle Jumbo, following him up 
 even into the marshes, where they run a risk of being 
 snapped at by a crocodile. An odd elephant has been known 
 to avenge man and teach Mr, Crocodile a lesson, one instance 
 having occurred when I was at Kashobwe's. The elephants 
 came down in the tropical effulgence of moonlight to bathe 
 in the fen-marshes, their gleeful splashing quite lively. 
 Timid little baby calves shrinking on the edge and 
 refusing to plunge, the mother coming up and squirting 
 a shower-bath as their share in the fun. Comical little 
 rogues these, standing about four feet high, skin falling in 
 folds and far too big for them. There they are, looking 
 exactly like a dozen youngsters wearing the coats and 
 trousers of their elder brothers. This submerged marsh, 
 
 however, be it noted, is alive with " crocs," and these 
 
 433 
 
434 THINKING BLACK 
 
 reptiles quite coolly commence to nip poor Jumbo's toes, 
 forgetful of the fact that Jumbo's trunk is Jumbo's glory. 
 At any rate, Nemesis falls like a bolt from the blue, for, 
 smacking like a long whip, down comes th^t elephant's 
 trunk, twisting round the crocodile's tail, and — tableau ! 
 With one half-shriek, half-squeak, the long greenish- 
 yellow croc is sent flying over the marsh — flop ! 
 splash ! thirty yards off". That deft tight grip the tusker 
 took of the huge reptile's tail, and the way in the moon- 
 light he waved it theatrically aloft like the figure-of-eight 
 smack of a whip, doubtless made that crocodile unto the 
 third and fourth generation resolve never again to nibble 
 at an elephant's toes. 
 
 The mannish type of woman here even tackles a 
 crocodile, and Madam Luban is not too finicking in the 
 choice of a weapon. These ladies are quite deft with 
 the short national knife, and two of them attacked a 
 crocodile in best Amazon manner. They had gone down 
 to the fishing-weir to empty the wicker baskets when 
 a lurking croc shot out at them with a snap. Taking 
 advantage of the fact that when this beast misses a first 
 grab he must pause to unlock his teeth, these plucky 
 women attacked him w4th their two short knives and 
 finished him in a few minutes. But what a weird 
 business, the long yellow crocodile writhing with his 
 wounds, and snap, snapping his white teeth in chagrin ! 
 The two women flowing with blood yet never a wince ; 
 two paltry penknives doing it all. And all the while 
 yonder is a heron fishing on a sand-spit, chuckling with 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 435 
 
 glee. Quite the largest of these Saurians ever seen 
 hereabouts was found farther up, dead by its own act 
 of folly. Nor knife nor spear killed this monster, only 
 its own vile voracity : the crocodile killed the negro, and 
 the killed man killed the crocodile. Washed up on the 
 bank, the dead monster lay four feet high — not long — 
 with a tell-tale human armbone sticking out of its chest. 
 The old fisherman who acted as sort of " Crocodile 
 Coroner " on the occasion, clearly and convincingly proved 
 that the reptile, instead of making one sure bite of his 
 victim, had snapped off" this arm then grabbed a second 
 time before swallowing the first. Thus in murdering the 
 man it committed suicide, the ragged end of the humerus 
 boring through to tell the tale that it had stuck athwart 
 the gullet and worked right out. " King over all the 
 children of pride " as it is, little did the old fisherman 
 guess what a grisly pun he made of the crocodile's name 
 by dubbing them " the Undertakers " ( Vakoha Panshi). 
 
 But to return to our mighty Jumbo. 
 
 Mere beefy bulk, though, is nothing in forest prowess, 
 and this same ponderous elephant positively trembles at 
 the thought of a tiny leech. And no wonder, for many 
 an elephant dies an awful death from a leech sucking the 
 inner membrane of his trunk until the monstrous tusker is 
 maddened to death. Goaded to its doom by a tiny leech, 
 like a locomotive thundering down the line, off this six 
 tons of madness rushes at fifteen miles per hour — " Any- 
 where, anywhere, out of the world ! " You can come 
 across a huge clearing in the grass, where the writhing 
 
436 THINKING BLACK 
 
 giant has nearly beaten his own brains out, the agony all 
 centred in that finest and most delicate of all his organs, 
 the " marconigram " trunk. Yes, one tiny leech can 
 puncture that huge balloon of beef, the vulnerable point 
 this vaunted trunk. On Lake Mweru this is called " the 
 leech doom," and is the cause of that curious ceremony 
 all elephants perform when they come across drinking- 
 water. This function is called " the benediction" (Kupara), 
 and the elephant passes a scared, wistful gaze over the 
 sheet of water, at the same time waving his trunk like a 
 mesmerist again and again over the solemn, treacherous 
 pond. But the trunk, as a matter of fact, is no magician's 
 wand, but the supreme headquarters of Jumbo's cunning, 
 and supplying him with, not so much a sixth sense as a 
 sensorium commune. Instead of " praying " a sort of 
 grace-before-meat kind of petition, as the native suggests, 
 he is really wringing from the water the " leech secret." 
 Certainly the merest soup9on of leech-treachery is enough, 
 and with one trumpet-roar the idea of disgust is so strong 
 that it gives him momentum for a fifteen-mile run. Is 
 this the reason why an elephant has been endowed with a 
 trunk ? I mean, if clear water is so needful to Jumbo, 
 then does not this very length of trunk permit him to 
 drink from the bank without entering the water and 
 thereby stirring up the muddy sediment ? 
 
 '' [Later.) 
 
 Again I say, Bravo ! for the men who risk life and limb 
 following them up. The average African hunter is a 
 stalwart who works hard, walks far, and is named " friend 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 437 
 
 of the forest." What splendid evangehsts these wandering 
 Nimrods make ! Take an instance. An elephant-hunter 
 gets soundly and profoundly saved, so at once God claims 
 his witness far afield. His elephants, of course, claim his 
 presence out there too. Away beyond the edge of 
 cultivation he goes, following up the spoor of his elephants ; 
 dipping down into gorges, skirting precipices, sinking into 
 bulrush bogs — • 
 
 "To preach as never sure to preach again, 
 And as a dying man to dying men." 
 
 Then he comes back to tell us all about it at our 
 Saturday night prayer-meeting, a weird tale of the lonely 
 bush and the stately goings of our God. It would test 
 the most skilled in mental acrobatics to explain away 
 such personal intervention of Almighty God to and for 
 that hunter of His. " What will prayer do for you ? " 
 laugh his old hunter chums. " All that God can do for 
 me," is the royal reply. The misses as well as the 
 hits are all reported as occasions for praise. And his 
 favourite Bible proof is that " the Lord preserveth man 
 and beast." Listen to his quaint exegesis — preserveth the 
 man when He grants a hit, preserveth tJie least when He 
 grants a miss ! That is to say, locked up in the custody 
 of this one verse you have all the fates and fortunes of the 
 hunter and his prey : God for the man, yet God for the 
 beast — yea, God all and in all. 
 
 But one flash reveals the diamond. And this exhorter 
 in the prayer-meeting soon gets to close quarters with his 
 
438 THINKING BLACK 
 
 younger brethren, the local preachers. " You think," 
 says he, " that this preaching in your own suburbs is 
 evangelising Africa (a mere radius of a few miles) ; but 
 in my wanderings I come upon an Africa you know not — 
 lost villages in the far bush, groups of towns that never 
 saw the map. Oh, my elephants lead me to strange 
 corners and among stranger folk. They lead the way 
 and I must follow ; and sometimes, lying across our track 
 ahead, we see shafts of ruddy light shooting up, and here 
 we are on a long-lost village. Once in olden times it was 
 fabled that they had a visit from a Northern tribe, but 
 since then they have lived and died lost in the bush. So 
 what do I do ? I let my herd of elephants escape, and 
 stay with these scared-of-eye Africans — did not God lead 
 me to them ? And if God's way is our way, will not His 
 joy be our joy ? " 
 
 He has lost his elephants owing to this intercepting 
 town — 
 
 " But all through the mountains, thunder-riven, 
 And up from the rocky steep, 
 There arose a cry to the gates of Heaven : 
 
 ' Rejoice ! I have found My sheep ! 
 And the angels echoed, around the throne, 
 'Rejoice! For the Lord brings back His own!'" 
 
 Thus he tells his tale. His profession is elephants, 
 but his confession is Christ. And who would compare 
 profession with confession — what are literal elephants to 
 spiritual sheep ? Not once but several times has he 
 broken in on such old-world folks — ^a true Mission to the 
 lost, far truer than many a high-sounding enterprise born 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 439 
 
 in a committee-room or baptized on a platform. Watch 
 him, this apostle of the Nimrod cult. A veteran of life's 
 battles with a war-worn face, there he stands in his plain 
 loin-cloth, the very plainness of the old hunter being a 
 plainer rebuke to the young generation of over-dressed 
 Christians. He adorns the doctrine, and they are too 
 apt to adorn themselves. A mighty hunter hefore the 
 Lord. 
 
 As we have already seen, of course one swallow does 
 not make a summer in Africa. But (if one dare execute 
 such a straddle on cross metaphors) here is a straw that 
 indicates the current among the cannibals. I refer to a 
 curiously foreign feature of life in here, a great tribal 
 meeting on sanitation summoned by the deep-voiced 
 Nkumfi, or sycamore-drum, the Chief taking his seat by 
 my side and seconding everything. Being thirsty, I 
 proposed to indulge my baser nature with a cup of water, 
 but found it filthy with contamination. If " Afric's 
 sunny fountains " would only roll down water instead of 
 sand at times, it would be a decided improvement. 
 " Colden sands " sounds poetic, but in Africa we must 
 get all our poetry out of the plain prose of life, and this 
 trek I have drunk red water and black water, yellow 
 water and white water, but worst of all was this green 
 stuff to-day. Ah yes I I believe in "holy water" 
 provided it is of the right kind. Pushing investigations, 
 we soon find out that here is a vast tribe living on a 
 dunghill of disease, the whole insanitary condition of 
 the place a clear case of ten thousand dirty men shaking 
 
440 THINKING BLACK 
 
 their dirty fists in Nature's face. "Dirt-cheap," as a 
 phrase, may be excellent English, but here in Lubaland 
 dirt is not cheap, oh no, but costly, disease-gendering and 
 deadly, in fact. Hence this curious innovation — a lecture 
 on sanitation. Here they gather, massed in their thousands, 
 my business being to pulverise prejudices. It turns out 
 a famous gathering they will never forget, that seething 
 black cloud melted from the distrust of an attack on old 
 heathen ways of life to excited acquiescence when the 
 thing was taken right out of our hands and made law. 
 Shot after shot rang into the hill behind the town 
 by way of ratification, and towards the end I darted in 
 with— Christ crucified. They are utterly delighted to 
 know that ive, in the night of the Druids and later, were 
 as bad as they. It was very good of them to let me 
 down so softly, for my sanitary address was more poignant 
 than polite. In order to convey the truth with entire 
 fidelity, I had, in fact, dredged the dictionary for 
 adjectives with some sting in them. Besides, we must 
 remember that these dirty doings of theirs all enshrine 
 great traditions, and I was really combating prejudices 
 of a most bristly kind. However, at glad last, a ray of 
 intelligence actually pierced the mists of the cannibal 
 brain, and the whole mob caught at the extremely 
 elementary idea that there is a weak futility in poisoning 
 yourself with filth. Yet once again I admit that 
 Aristotle was right, and that this one swallow does not 
 make a summer in Africa. 
 
 Of course, crooked Nature has likewise trapped the 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 441 
 
 Mweru negro into very crooked sanitation — the old 
 story of tlie negro debasing his surroundings and the 
 surroundings taking revenge by debasing the ])egro. A 
 hundred huts packed together means that a smothered 
 incipient cough beginning away at the corner of the 
 hamlet is, in a few days, heard infectiously cough, cough- 
 ing its way round the beehive town. But if so with an 
 elementary cough, how about the infectional terrors of 
 sleeping sickness ? In Lubaland, as I now write, whole 
 towns are being wiped off the map — the N odder they 
 call that disease. So, too, smallpox licks up a whole 
 population, the disease sweeping through the land like 
 the annual grass-fires. Here, then, we see them crowding 
 and verminating in their filth. Living in crowds they 
 must die in crowds, like the flock of five duck you can 
 shoot with one cartridge from that same stockade. For 
 the Luban duck are like the adjacent smallpox Africans, 
 they stupidly flock thickly, a half-dozen easily falling to 
 one shot. In Lubaland one burning arrow silently fired 
 into that grass village did literally burn the whole of 
 the mushroom edifices out of existence — a perfect type 
 this of what inflammable diseases do all over our weary, 
 Christless land. 
 
 Such, then, is the precious price they pay for the 
 plan of higgledy-piggledy. For the crooked ways of the 
 crooked negro have not yet been exhausted, and long ago 
 it must have been obvious to the most superficial reader 
 that this crooked sanitation must also breed a crooked 
 set of morals. Laugh at the Missionary as the modern 
 
442 THINKING BLACK 
 
 traveller must, we dare not hide the fact that the soul 
 of all improvement is the improvement of the soul. The 
 infectious cough going round the town is only the type 
 of the infectious immoral gossip — there is no secret 
 hidden in that whole grass town. The hundred huts are 
 only a whispering gallery, and what is told in the Bantu 
 ear is made known on the Bantu housetops. Mere bairns 
 are corrupt and tainted at the cradle, life has no more 
 secrets for them. Preach against it, and they only poke 
 the proverb at you, "What baby lion ever trembled at 
 his father's roaring ? " Pour out on them your most 
 withering scorn, and they nag you thus : "If the tree has 
 grown up crooked it is because no one straightened it 
 when young." Thus the negro river of morals is fouled at 
 its own fount ; the said fount being, so to speak, not a cool 
 mountain spring high up in the clouds, but rather one 
 of their own hot springs hiccuping down in the sweltering 
 plains. Even the Missionary who makes a clutch at 
 these waifs being swept past in the current of sin can 
 only give them two hours or so of corrective school 
 training ; but, alas, against these few and fugitive hours 
 in the day you have the retrograde lapse of twenty-two 
 hours into heathen hovel-life. Think of a whole heathen 
 family packed like pigs in one tiny little beehive hut ! 
 Still clinging to forest figures of speech, they call these 
 tots of theirs Tunsaala, or twigs, elders by parity of 
 reasoning being big branches on the tribal tree — a happy 
 Missionary metaphor this to encourage any one working 
 in Africa among the young. " For," say they, " how do 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 443 
 
 you set the camp logs blazing in the forest if not by first 
 of all coaxing a few tiny twigs to catch fire, the six-feet- 
 long logs soon flaming furiously from this humble initial 
 ignition?" N.B.: The young teach the old, the twigs 
 lead up to the branches, and the chips of the old blocks 
 will send the said old blocks blazing. It's coming, oh, it's 
 coming ! 
 
 This packing of the domicile into one den, remember, 
 is only an enlarged photo of the domicile packing itself 
 with mush at supper-time. The same family who crowd 
 each other out in one tiny hut is likewise seen crowding 
 round one tiny pot, the big paws and the little paws all 
 digging into the thick porridge in the same ratio as a 
 soup-ladle and a salt-spoon. The negro argues that God, 
 in perfect design, has dieted mankind according to the 
 divine gradation in the size of human hands. Baby 
 cannot eat too big spoonfuls if he uses his own little fists : 
 " Little meat gives little sauce " is the native apology on 
 this score. There is probably a moral in all this peculiarly 
 pertinent to our poor prayers, to wit, what God gives us 
 is better than what we can take. A Luban child asks 
 her aunt for some pea-nuts. " Take a handful," says the 
 elder. '* You give me a handful, auntie ; your hand is 
 bigger " — to which we say, Bravo ! for little Miss Salt- 
 spoon, who scores an easy first against Mrs. Soup-ladle. 
 Here, then, once again, you have a fruitful source of 
 disease — a common pot with a dozen fists of varying 
 degrees of cleanliness all putting the public health in 
 jeopardy. Like the little beehive roof of his hut, with 
 27 
 
444 THINKING BLACK 
 
 all the matchwood rafters shooting up and converging 
 into one apex, so, and much worse so, with these human 
 hand-ladles and spoons, all shooting into the centre of 
 gravity, all digging out from the mass of mush their 
 voracious supper. Speaking is taboo at this sacred 
 season. " Table-talk " is only the happy lot of other 
 lands who boast of tables, but Mr. African dines on 
 the earth that boasts of seed-time and harvest, and in 
 the first instance gave them that bountiful meal. But 
 the high crime and misdemeanour of the town is to dine 
 alone — their very word " criminal " has this meaning, 
 " Mr. Eat-alone." Such a one is a thief and has gone 
 over to the wild beasts. For the notion of people 
 assembling in order to absorb food is certainly not a 
 natural idea : the lower animals never invite each other 
 to dinner — on the contrary. 
 
 Here, then, is Africa's challenge to its Missionaries. 
 Will they allow a whole continent to live like beasts in 
 such hovels, millions of negroes cribbed, cabined, and 
 confined in dens of disease ? No doubt it is our diurnal 
 duty to preach that the soul of all improvement is the 
 improvement of the soul. But God's equilateral triangle 
 of body, soul, and spirit must never be ignored. Is not 
 the body wholly ensouled, and is not the soul wholly 
 embodied ? Too often in Missionary literature the writer 
 talks about these " humble abodes " of his black parish- 
 ioners, whereas the real phrasing of the matter is that they 
 are more humbling than humble. The more grandiose 
 our Mission stations, the more striking and impossible the 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 445 
 
 native huts. The louder, too, the call to gut out these 
 clotted masses of tropical slums. Ignore this as Africa's 
 burning question, and you commit the sad old folly of 
 the Middle Ages — I mean when the Church built big 
 cathedrals and men lived in hovels. Ever since those 
 days back in Bihe when I lived with Mr. Negro chez lui, 
 I have a plan simmering in my mind, a plan that involves 
 long one-street villages lined out for miles. The thing 
 can be done, and we Missionaries should do it. Oh yes, 
 we are here for souls, but — I repeat it — the negro soul is 
 as wholly embodied as the negro body is wholly ensouled. 
 In other words, in Africa the only true fulfilling of your 
 heavenly calling is the doing of earthly things in a 
 heavenly manner. 
 
 [Later.) 
 Penning, as I do, these lines long years after, 
 here on my table is a measuring- tape that witnesses the 
 success of this idea. That tape has helped to line out six 
 miles of street frontage along our tangled Mweru. A 
 whole tribe pluming itself on its dirty dens actually, 
 en masse, took the idea up, burned its old huts and built 
 long one-street hamlets along the edge of the cliff. Even 
 the preposterous Lubans caught the idea of the thing, 
 and the last developments in 1909 are a wonder. Writing 
 on the spot, let me tell what happened. I am off these 
 three weeks at a Luban town, living with a negro in 
 his own mud hut ; we go halves with the domicile and 
 are in close touch. Just one year ago I had a rousing 
 time here, then passed on, and seemingly after long years 
 
446 THINKING BLACK 
 
 things have come to a head at last. Found them, as 
 a township, a dark mass of dilapidated huts, and the 
 problem was how to get them out of that hole and give 
 them a fresh start. That was a year ago. Now all is so 
 changed that " marvellous " is the true adjective qualifying 
 the truest of nouns — change. After many years' tentative 
 work in Africa, there seems (from a letter before me) a 
 serious concession that it has been largely along wrong 
 lines. The error lay in training exotic carpenters and 
 joiners, who at once deserted their own tribe and went 
 far ahead, to return never, never more. The clamant 
 need is confronting the tribe as a whole, and "housing" 
 it along sane, simple lines — two- or three-roomed cottages, 
 that is to say. 
 
 To get a whole town so to arise after the sleep of 
 centuries is a very thrilling thing ; there is a quiver in 
 the air, and you feel in a very true manner you are getting 
 nearer the root of things. They do it all, their own 
 houses built by and for themselves. Then away at the 
 end of this new town of theirs, you can see the roof of 
 the Bible-school, the point this where we link up the 
 spiritual with the temporal. Man can see to the housing 
 of a town, but God alone can see to the homing of it. 
 And, remember, in the old dens of darkness the fount of 
 life was poisoned : no home, no holy felicities of life — a 
 human pigsty. The children of these holes we daily 
 clutched at as they were daily swept past us, but the 
 Mission school only has them for two hours, as against 
 the long reactionary remainder of the day (and night !) in 
 
■QD 
 
 "a, 
 
 < ^ 
 
 — ' 0) 
 
 s 
 
 o 
 
 a, 
 m 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 447 
 
 heathendom. Heuce this happy solution in the housing 
 of the people, with the hope that God will "home" the 
 people we have " housed." 
 
 Of course in fighting filth of this sort you must be 
 ruthlessly efficient, and one old man even took the field 
 and defended my action when I could scarcely do so 
 myself. Kinder to me than I could be to myself, he, 
 referring to the breaking with many a past custom, said, 
 "How can you enter through an old abandoned door- 
 way without first breaking the many cobwebs blocking 
 entrance ? " A concession this — and from a very old high- 
 and-dry Tory — that their ancient ideas were cobwebs, 
 nothing more. And here is my reward this trip, for I am 
 now living with a raw Luban in his own three-roomed 
 house : mark you, in his house, when a year ago you 
 could not have slept in his town, the pestiferous hole 
 being nigh mortal. 
 
 These lines are penned to the flicker of a tiny lamp 
 burning linseed oil : not true linseed, really sesame, and 
 not a bad light. This oil is grown for us by the Lubans : 
 a new crop is just being planted, and these oil-growers 
 speak about "growing" our light for us. Thus literally 
 "light is sown for the righteous." Who ever heard of 
 the Israelites having mineral oil ? Obviously it must 
 have been sown ; and Christ the Light was sown in 
 sorrow too. 
 
 But what about tools ? you ask. Talk about 
 economising your hardware — here is a snapshot I saw 
 to-day, eloquent of the penury of centuries. The negro 
 
448 THINKING BLACK 
 
 — one of the illustrious family named " Smith " — was 
 squatted under a tall clump of millet thirteen feet high, 
 two old worn-out garden-hoes in his hand. Mere " scrap- 
 heap " iron now, they had done the season's farming for 
 him : witness the waving millet in the background. 
 " Now," quoth the negro endearingly to his broken scraps 
 of hoes, " you have made unto me a harvest, and, go to ! 
 let us make an axe to build a house wherein to dwell." 
 So, sure enough, the transformation is soon going on 
 apace. First of all he manipulates two antelope-skins into 
 a bellows, and then (dressed in skins himself) he starts to 
 blow as loud as his bellows. Then comes the funny 
 business of a funnel for his blast furnace ; this moulded 
 out of mother earth like the blacksmith himself Then 
 we reach the item of coals — a heap of red iron-wood 
 reduced to charcoal, which he soon puff-puffs into a blaze. 
 And lo, the fire being now as red as it is ready, this son 
 of Tubal Cain throws his two bits of hoes into the furnace 
 and grips his hammer. But what is this hammer? A 
 nice round stone. And what the anvil ? The hammer's 
 own cousin — another block of stone. There are tongs, 
 too — five, six, or seven strips of thick green bark all at 
 hand, bark that bends at will into any shape of tongs he 
 desires. The very greenness of these bark tongs is their 
 major value, for when, in welding, they bite the glowing 
 iron, instead of burning like a match these tongs simply 
 spit out their native juice, so that each pair of tongs can 
 bite the red iron three times before ignition. " Fighting 
 flame " is what this Smith-by-name and Smith-by-trade 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 449 
 
 negro thinks he is doing, and the paradox of his poverty 
 is that he can always boast a wealth of these stone-age 
 anvils, hammers, and tongs, the very iron having been 
 dug out of the earth as a stone. 
 
 Thus he whirls round in his circle of existence, exactly 
 like the earth he dwells on. For the earth opened to 
 yield the iron — that made the ore — that made the field of 
 grain — that made strong the man — that made and unmade 
 the hoe — that made the axe — that made the cool cottage 
 in which he dwells : verily, this is the-house-that-Jack- 
 built. Why wonder that this model black strokes himself 
 down with complacency in the borrowed words: "Take 
 us all, professions and trades together, and you will find 
 by actual measurement round the head and round the 
 chest, and round our manners and characters, if you like, 
 that we blacksmiths are the only genuine aristocracy at 
 present in existence " ? 
 
 More about polygamy. Things certainly get " curi- 
 ouser and curiouser," as Alice had occasion to remark 
 in her travels in Wonderland. Among the Lubans man is 
 reckoned such a frigid monster that a woman is graciously 
 permitted to cook his meal, but may not eat of same. 
 She is caught in a cobweb of Mhala laws and by-laws, a 
 stringent point being that she cannot even speak during 
 the whole period of cooking and consumption of food. 
 Only after her giant is refreshed is this " covenant of 
 silence" formally annulled by the breaking of a stick 
 or straw into three fragments, each fragment kissed by 
 the lady as she throws it away, and then the remaining 
 
450 THINKING BLACK 
 
 third bit is broken between them. Sequel : three 
 pretences of shaking hands, the fingers not meeting, 
 however. And all this mummery at food for ever and 
 a day, and after every meal, the man receiving his 
 homage with a smug complacency. This kissing of the 
 fragments of stick by the lady-love is, of course, the 
 only kissing known in the tribe, for one of their bits 
 of banter against the white race is that they " lick each 
 other" as a greeting. The same woman this who has 
 built her own house, including even the final touches 
 of furnishing ; the firewood and pots all her own finding 
 too. Let a Missionary pitch his tent in this town 
 and soon swarms of these ladies seek his serious 
 opinion anent their crooked conjugal relations. These 
 ladies suffer manifest distress and keep buzzing round 
 like a swarm of bees ; snip-snap for hours, the African 
 women beating the men at putting posers. Now it is 
 one understands why, in the only negro lady's con- 
 versation contained in Scripture, it should be noted that 
 she asked (even !) Solomon " hard questions." From the 
 days of Sheba's queen they are all alike pouring out 
 puzzle-speech the livelong day. Wave them off", beseech 
 them to stop, implore them to change the subject : oh 
 no, all their gabble is concerning the holy estate. My 
 rule is to tell all such unblushingly that the woman 
 who wants her husband to be diff'erent generally wants 
 a diff'erent husband. Very often, though, the men are 
 brutes and to blame. 
 
 The usual story is that the plaintiff' is Mrs. No. 1, 
 
BLACK MAN = HLACK MANNERS 451 
 
 that she married him long ago when the worhl was 
 younger and he and she at the mating age. Then 
 came Mrs. No. 2 ; a pause, then Mrs. No. 3 intrudes 
 on the friendship of Mesdames Nos. 1 and 2. Accord- 
 ing to this lady, it seems a mistake to say it takes 
 two to make a quarrel, for here you have a woman 
 arguing that two wives for one husband would be 
 passable. What she does declare to be deadly is this 
 terrible triangle, for just as it takes three straight lines 
 to enclose a space, so seemingly it takes three wrangling 
 wives to make a quarrel. At any rate, soon enough, 
 the husband's snappish retorts tell No. 1 the tale that 
 she has been superseded — yes — she who for so long 
 took hungrily the crumbs of affection that fell from 
 his table. The upshot of all this matrimonial muddle 
 seems to be that ideal wedlock is considered only a solid 
 bread-and-butter arrangement, and the best cook wins 
 the worst of husbands. No royal glance of love ever (?) 
 flashed from mate to mate, and the woman who ousts 
 another woman only does so in order to enslave herself 
 Yet for centuries this has gone on, a concubine cook 
 exerting all her blandishments to win a man's stomach, 
 not his heart. Is this the reason why the word for 
 stomach (Munda) is the same as for "heart"? No 
 simple fireside virtues in demand here. Cook, only 
 cook, and soon enough they find that the love that 
 has ends, quickly has an end. 
 
 But there are more horrors here, and all suogestive 
 of this land of uncounted tears. Between me and my 
 
452 THINKING BLACK 
 
 night's rest, lo, a heart-broken little girl weeping her 
 eyes out in the long grass. The spot is tangled, and 
 there is a rough overgrown heap — her mother's grave. 
 This orphan is seven years of age, and in the adjacent 
 village she was belaboured with blows to force her to 
 marry an old negro rake. So, with tear-soaked face, 
 away she darts from the dwellings of men, out, away 
 out to her mother's grave in the bush, one moan and 
 one only : " Oh, mother, why did you leave me out 
 here in the land of perplexities ? " {Pano pa kanshia). 
 This led to a stormy encounter with the old roue, and 
 if anger be "a punishing of oneself for the fault of 
 another," then was I sorely punished. Without any 
 beat-about-the-bush circumlocution, here you have the 
 darkest smudge in a dark history — the baby-brides of 
 Africa. Here is a curse that must be faced and fought, 
 all the angels of God fighting for you. Yet they can 
 argue even this. Trying to talk me out of my 
 abhorrence, they insist that " baby-betrothal " is only their 
 tribal system of " Life Insurance," the idea being that 
 if the child comes to an untimely end then the husband 
 must pay the insurance money. But they forget to 
 say that " Mutual Insurance " is the real idea, and this 
 cuts both ways, the child having to pay for her old 
 husband's demise. Here, then, is a so-called Insurance 
 really ensuring one thing — the misery of the tiny 
 widow. 
 
 Our Sera neighbours over the hill are a bad lot. 
 There I found more people buried alive. But is this kind 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 453 
 
 of thing really authentic ? The answer is that the best 
 sort of African proof is always that genuine thing you 
 yourself stumble over in the grass, accidentally. Here is 
 an instance. Down in the Sera plain I put up for the 
 night in a random hamlet on the edge of the bulrush-bog. 
 At sundown here come a crowd of merry bairns round 
 me, as happy with their white visitor as a cat in the 
 fender. But now for a change of metaphor. Then they 
 begin to prattle like starlings, putting many a poser to 
 poor me, big questions from little folks — why not ? 
 Should not a big horse take a big fence ? Next we 
 exchange names as per Luban courtesy. The first little 
 girl of my gossip is much more strikingly well dressed 
 than all the crowd, so much that one opines she is a 
 personality, the local magnate's daughter perhaps. But 
 when I probe inquisitively about her nice beads, nicer 
 calico, and fantastic hair-coiffure, it soon begins to dawn 
 on me that this really harmless interlocutor is painfully 
 embarrassing. Had village elders been around, of course, 
 I would never have got wind of that tragedy at all, but 
 here are a dozen precocious little chatterers telling me 
 the tale. Describing, if you please, most graphically how 
 they killed this little mode de Paris girl's mother at the 
 last funeral. That she is no Chief's daughter at all at 
 all ; and that, in fact, she has only been paid so much 
 " hush-money " for her mother's death, witness these 
 blue beads and fancy calico. Mother had gone on the 
 long, lonely journey with the Chief, who had always an 
 escort in life, and must not be deprived of one in death, 
 
454 THINKING BLACK 
 
 the orphan child receiving " solatium and damages " for 
 her mother's sacrificial death. She herself, though, would 
 grow up, only to be one day fuel for the same fire. So 
 much for the tell-tale vouchers you stumble over among 
 the villages, and the next best criterion is the thing you 
 overhear in Africa, Remember, the " Socratic method " 
 of fishing for facts, by questions, is Africa's greatest peril : 
 is not an African only an echo of his querist ? (Besides 
 — oh, pitfall for the unwary — unless you conjugate your 
 verb of interrogation in the subjunctive mood, you don't 
 ask a question, hut dictate an answer.) On the 7th 
 January, down the Lualaba, I overheard and jotted down 
 a " sacrifice " talk going on : the white man is supposed to 
 be sleeping, and this is what comes over his shoulders. 
 Chimunwa's brother stretched out his lame leg to his 
 listeners, then tenderly and approvingly patted its only 
 four toes. Quoth he : " Ah, you may laugh at ' Game- 
 leg ' ( Chilemakulu), but proud am I to have only four toes." 
 " Why ? " chorused the company expectantly. " The lack 
 of my fifth toe on my left foot," answered he, " is my 
 life. They were going to make me one of the sacrifices 
 
 at 's funeral, but a sacrifice with a blemish won't do, 
 
 so I got off scot free." The point again made in that talk 
 was that as in life the dead Chief owned the country and 
 its inhabitants, it was obviously absurd to think he should 
 be allowed to go all alone on the " long journey " of 
 death without company. Then came a snatch of pure 
 Bantu which unconsciously was a literal quotation from 
 Isaiah : " The bed is shorter than a man can lie on in the 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 455 
 
 world of the dead." This, to prove the loneliness of the 
 tomb and the need for company. 
 
 To press again for the reason of all that murder is 
 to receive this time a utilitarian explanation. Piercing 
 below the stratum of the sacrificial idea, you reach that 
 deepest deep in human nature, the law of self-preservation. 
 It is only the African Tsar's plan for securing himself 
 immunity from the anarchist's bomb — merely the King's 
 threat that if they kill him, then in revenge he will die, 
 dragging many down with him to the grave. Hence the 
 negro song of warning — 
 
 "As the forest trees rock 
 
 When the wild winds blow, 
 The King's death is a shock, 
 For how bloody the woe 1 " 
 
 But is there no glint of sunshine in it all ? Yes — and 
 very much yes. Life is full of contrasts in Africa, and 
 one such bloody sacrifice was really the means of breaking 
 a bad heart of adamant. This was our pioneer elder of 
 the Garenganze church, the late Smish, who was an 
 executioner in the old days. Behold him hurrying to 
 her premature death a young mother with her babe, when 
 the poor doomed woman at the grave's mouth took the 
 baby and, forgetful of her own impending death-pangs, 
 sobbed out, "Oh, deal kindly with my bairn 1 " (Ikala 
 viya ne Kana Kami). Smish never forgot that stab — 
 I mean the royal glance of maternal love this mother 
 flashed to her bairn was never forgotten. Poor baby, on 
 being torn from her, did not know how he stabbed his 
 
456 THINKING BLACK 
 
 dear dying mother in the expostulating cry, " Mama ! 
 Mama ! " Years after, in contrition of heart, the memory 
 of that dying sob stabbed his soul, and when he heard of 
 Christ praying for His enemies he thought likewise of 
 that dying woman's prayer. 
 
 Watch how we conciliate these cut- throats. Picture 
 a tall hunter of powerful build, with a smile that would 
 frighten a bull-dog. But when his tale is told, it is a 
 wonder he has a smile at all. Have not two years dragged 
 past since his right arm was torn to pieces by the burst- 
 ing of his old "five feet of gas-pipe" gun? The story 
 runs that, being a big brave black, he had enough of the 
 child left in him to want his weapon to go off with a bang ; 
 so, one day in hunting, he loaded up inordinately, the 
 charge of powder nearly a foot deep in the barrel. Of 
 course, the bang that should have flattened t.he elephant 
 on the ground burst back on the hunter, and the biter 
 was bit. Thus began the twenty-four dragging months 
 of agony, when the quacks from far and near exploited 
 the gaping wound until the one became many. At last, 
 we come on the scene, and the problem now stands how 
 to break this ring of rascals and cure our man. Well, 
 plucky Mrs. Crawford, after much judicious wheedling, 
 finally conciliated the whole gang of kinsmen, the stoutest 
 objector being the man's own wife, who resentfully sniffed 
 a very gem of a sniff in protest. To the last, this good 
 lady — one of the well-meaning, fussy type — turned up 
 her nose at the idea of a " death-sleep " operation ; but 
 this turning up of her nose was not to be wondered at, 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 457 
 
 for the said snub-nose is naturally adapted for that pur- 
 pose. Yet was she a kindly little body, and no doubt it 
 was out of genuine affection for the sufferer she resented 
 the terribly business-like look of the table and gleaming 
 instruments. Just as a peaceful cat dozing in the sun- 
 light becomes a thing of bristling wickedness and fury 
 when an enemy comes on the scene, even so Mrs. Hunter 
 and her dislike of this " death-sleep." But, at last, we 
 won her round. Result : a splendidly successful ampu- 
 tation of the arm by my pioneer wife, the poor hunter 
 getting the first moment of peaceful calm in two years 
 when he entered that soft fleecy cloud of chloroform. 
 Then after three days, all the premature wrinkles of pain 
 smoothed out of his brow, and once again the old joie 
 de vivre flamed up in his face — a triumph of antiseptic 
 surgery. In the coming years, no doubt, when Africa is 
 a gridiron of railways, smart brick hospitals will grace 
 these latitudes, but no suroeon will ever boast of such 
 fame as this "death-sleep" lady and her pioneer 
 operation. 
 
 The scene changes, and here is a whole town in the 
 terrors of toothache, my dental patients numbering not 
 ten, twenty, or thirty, but actually more than fifty. " The 
 lion of the mouth is roaring " is the tribal phrase for tooth- 
 ache, and the only remedy known is to attack the tooth 
 with an axe. That is to say, they bring the tortured 
 negro up to the axe, then fitting in a plug of hard wood 
 against the stubborn tooth, the axe crashes against the 
 plug, sending the tooth, in some cases, down the man's 
 
458 THINKING BLACK 
 
 throat. No wonder when the theory of my forceps spread 
 abroad the whole town tumbled to the thing with joy, one 
 woman with perfectly good teeth running up like a mad 
 thing and distorting her mouth for me to operate. " Oh 
 no," explained she, with a soft sigh, " I have not tooth- 
 ache, but the lion of the mouth will roar after you are 
 gone." The raw bulk of my dental patients, however, had 
 one sing-song plaint translated thus into honest, thick- 
 skulled Hodge dialect : " You needn't mind which, they 
 all aches at times." Yet this is the tribe that boasts the 
 ancient proverb, " The teeth have no substitutes," and the 
 very notion of an Englishman wearing false teeth sets 
 them frantic with excitement. So ho, the ancients were 
 out, for the teeth have excellent substitutes. The Luban 
 fad in the fashion of teeth is that the four lower front 
 teeth must be knocked out, and any of the household not 
 so maimed is compelled to shut the door every night as a 
 punishment. 
 
 On the Garenganze shore of Lake Mweru, and nestling 
 at the foot of the Bukongolo Cliff, you find the average 
 fishing settlement hidden in a cloud of millions of 
 mosquitoes. The typical hamlet lies at the north of a dark 
 glen down which runs a mountain stream, and on the 
 Lake side it is shut off from view by dense pith-tree 
 forests, a weird picture these, apj^roximating to a mangrove 
 swamp. Year by year, the rich foreshore along the foot 
 of the cliff is growing in size, the mountains sending down 
 boulders and also a rich diluvial soil which mixes with the 
 beach sand. This amalgam is a garden land passing rich 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 459 
 
 and, owing to the inroads of Mweru, just the desideratum 
 for rice-growing. For such a huge expanse of water, the 
 crocodiles are surprisingly scarce, an African river always 
 boasting more than a lake. This penchant for rivers by 
 " crocs " is seen even on the Lake, where the confluence of 
 any stream is a sure, almost the only sign of the enemy. 
 And no wonder the fisher-folk coined the phrase "stealing 
 water" from Luapula. In order to strike fear of these 
 oily lurking crocodiles into the hearts of their young 
 people, the ordinary message a mother delivers to her 
 child is : "Go and steal some water from the crocodiles ! " 
 This persistent dread of being snapped has given the Shila 
 child phenomenally quick eyes, and their mode of mani- 
 pulating the water-jar has almost an element of jugglery 
 in it. I remember one dark day when a fisherman lost 
 his child by a crocodile, and on going out for his nets 
 found that there too they had forestalled him, a huge one 
 havino: torn his nets to tatters. Nor does the fatalistic 
 negro even attempt to better things for the tribe. The 
 elephant's penchant for " warranted pure water," however, 
 is often a means of its death, the harpoon-trap being 
 usually set in his tracks leading to water. Here is an 
 example just at my elbow. There is a great roaring out- 
 side, and it turns out that a young lad, Walepa, has killed 
 a monster elephant. Ever since Mrs. Crawford put this 
 lad under chloroform and cut off" his arm, Walepa had 
 been thought useless, but he certainly killed his elephant 
 in a most ruthlessly efficient manner. The negroes who 
 
 plume themselves on having two arms are now showering 
 28 
 
460 THINKING BLACK 
 
 compliments upon him, punctuated with hand-clapping. 
 The boy had heard that elephants were coming to drink 
 at an adjacent river, so setting out with his brother he 
 struck their trail leading to water. Taking advantage of 
 an overhanging high tree, he climbed and set a trap -spear 
 overhead, the missile of death pointing " dead-on " the 
 elephant's trail leading to water. But how was he to 
 make sure that the spear as it crashed down would pierce 
 a vital spot ? This he planned most slyly. Climbing the 
 tree with a small gourd of water, he asked his brother to 
 stand with back bent full in the trail below. And now 
 for the stroke of genius. He forthwith proceeds to sight 
 the spear by aiming at his brother's backbone with the 
 dripping water : drip ! drip ! until a drop finally struck 
 the backbone. What next ? The heavy spear is now 
 aimed " dead," and the youth descends, as he naively puts 
 it, " to see what God will do with a boy's spear." Sure 
 enough, a brief hour sees the whole boyish plot crowned 
 with fruition. Shivering with fear, the crash of approach- 
 ing elephants is heard, and the monster bull, as it trumpets 
 near the water, receives its death-blow from the descendins: 
 barbed spear. The negroes glory in that filthy, frothy 
 meat, but it is not edible to Europeans. It would need 
 not a cook, but a magician, to prepare it. The ivory is 
 valued at sixty guineas. But King Leopold's long arm 
 reaches out for all the ivory, the resultant revenue to 
 be nobly devoted to charity — the charity that begins at 
 home. 
 
 Ranging the Lake with your eye in April, you can 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 461 
 
 descry a curious procession of Sindbad-the-Sailor floating 
 islets, " Bob-abouts " ( Visera) their name. Really clotted 
 masses of papyrus, duck-weed, and Phragmites, these have 
 been swept down by the Luapula current, the rug and tug 
 of the eddies tearing them from the parent bank of the 
 river. So launched in the first instance on their long 
 voyage by the swirling Luapula, this same current pilots 
 them far down-Lake, their destination being any of the 
 capes jutting out to debar farther advance. Funny fact 
 though it looks, it is really these floating islands that have 
 crowded Kilwa in mid-Lake with leopards, and the islanders 
 tell the tale quite circumstantially. There came a dark 
 day when, like a pirate flying the black flag, one such 
 floating: island grounded on the South shore of Kilwa with 
 a young male leopard aboard, a poor quadruped Adam 
 this, without an Eve. One year passed and yet another, 
 and lo, a charming lady-leopard came across, cabin 
 passenger, if you please, in the cosy depths of another 
 floating island. At this point in the fisher narrative the 
 naked old " Admiral " of canoes sticks his hands into 
 imaginary pockets and drops his jaw. Need he add the 
 sequel? Both at the mating age, that quadruped Eve 
 really robbed them of their Eden, for are there not now as 
 many leopards as negroes on the island ? The theory that 
 these leopards swam across such an expanse of Lake is 
 absurd, albeit a leopard is the best swimmer of all African 
 Carnivora. The snug depths of these floating islands are 
 shady and seductive enough to account for such curious 
 cabin passengers. But better far than all this is the 
 
462 THINKING BLACK 
 
 splendid shelter all such afford to a poor fisherman in a 
 dug-out when struck by a white squall. To avoid sudden 
 swamping he darts his canoe, nozzle first, into the soft 
 pulpy island, and away they sail together, island and 
 canoe, the fisherman as dry as a kiln in his cool shelter of 
 rank floating grass. " Life-belt Island " we named one 
 such, for it saved a sailor's life. Here is a native who 
 believes that God could not love His Son, since He gave 
 Him up to die. His reason is that his grandfather was 
 the famous Mwalumuna, who taught what true paternal 
 love was. When far out on Mweru his canoe foundered. 
 Letting his wife sink, he battled on and on for hours in the 
 rough water, with his five-year-old son now on his back 
 and now on his breast. Sunset saw them safe on Kilwa 
 Island among the Arabs, who laugh at the idea of such 
 risk of life. Their proverb runs, " If the water come like 
 a deluge, place thy son under thy feet " — a reference this 
 to the Arab tradition that when Noah's rebel sons felt the 
 flood gaining on their mouths to choke them they put their 
 sons under their feet. 
 
 The hippo is a great factor in fisher-life, and poor 
 young Duvivier was killed off Mulonde Kiver by a 
 wild one not far from our door. The majority of Mweru 
 hippos have been galled off and on by the harpoons of 
 the fishermen, and the only safe shot is from the land. 
 Duvivier had given his animal a first shot and was 
 hoping to draw upon it decisively when the maddened 
 brute charged from beneath, so that probably the brave 
 young fellow was engulfed in its mouth, for I could 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 463 
 
 not find his body after dredging for four days. The 
 curious fact in connection with these Mweru hippos is 
 that they are grouped in austere " schools," called 
 Matanga, the various schools all known intimately 
 and boasting of personal names like genus homo. Thus 
 the old grandpa hippo is " Mulonde senior," while grandma 
 is popularly known as " Mrs. Kafulo," the sons and 
 grandsons all boasting of a serious " postal address " 
 appellation. Great excitement prevails among the 
 children of the fishing hamlet when a bumpy- faced little 
 baby-hippo pops its head above water to proclaim its 
 advent into hippodom. A queer little caricature of a 
 hippopotamus, heated wrangles take place among the 
 youngsters over its christening name, and I found one 
 small boy at Mulonde offering to fight the whole crowd 
 (in the order of seniority), rather than yield his nomination 
 for the brand-new pink hippo-baby's name. Feeding as 
 they do at the rate of five bushels per night, the poor 
 fishers' fields are raided recklessly ; but a Shila man only 
 shrugs his shoulders and, pointing out to the waves of 
 the Lake, says, " Yonder is my well-furrowed field ! " 
 The same idea this as when, paddling his canoe, he claims 
 to be " a miller of water " instead of a miller of flour. 
 This serious fact as to a hippo's fixed domicile is only 
 proved by the occasional seeming exception when a 
 young bull-hippo "marries out" of the school. For 
 although he hives off and marries into another school 
 many miles distant, yet whenever he is badly wounded 
 you can see him putting out to sea, and blowing like 
 
464 THINKING BLACK 
 
 a porpoise as he steers straight for the old "postal 
 address." In the grip of an imperative intuition, that 
 homing hippo makes a bee-line for the old place where, 
 as a pink bal)y, it was christened by the fishers' children. 
 It is a Medo-Persic law among hippos that they must 
 die where they were born. 
 
 But to return to our Lake-dwellers. These Shila 
 fishermen are plucky salts who hunt the hippo with 
 harpoons on their " coggly " dug-outs. The Lake is 
 full of a very pugnacious sort, which crush their canoes 
 on occasion. On the 3rd July, at the South end, a boat 
 of hunters shouted to me to come and help, and sure 
 enough on coming up with them I found, like whalers 
 playing a whale, they had a hard hippo in hand. He 
 had received two harpoons and was making away with 
 them both — tugging at the rope like a dog pulling at 
 his chain. The local hippo clan had turned out to the 
 rescue, surrounded their less fortunate fellow, put him 
 most loyally in the centre and kept him there, defying 
 the hunters to break through their clannish circle. It 
 was a real sight to see that belt of big heads keeping 
 hippo guard. Once and again the men broke through, 
 evoking only reverberating roars from the enraged 
 guardians, and narrowly escaping a capsize. On came 
 the sturdy " dug-outers " with loud, ostentatious splashing. 
 On came the heroic hippos with a rush to the tourna- 
 ment. And what a kill ! Floating usually four hours after 
 death, this one died in the sulks and his brethren of the 
 hippo school tucked him away under the tangled papyrus. 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 465 
 
 Farther along a bull-hippo charged me in a dug-out in 
 his best swashbuckler style. AVaited for him quietly, as 
 in two or three plunging springs he came on, bowling and 
 bellowing in rage ; then got a bullet in through his open 
 mouth. A momentary and momentous hush, then up he 
 comes with a suffocating, explosive noise, spouting blood. 
 Anon, taking the whole Thames-at- Westminster-Bridge 
 width of the Lualaba, he floundered and writhed in his 
 death-struggle, lashing the placid water into foam. The 
 final act was to throw himself theatrically up in 
 the air, then, with a sucking swirl, he sank like a 
 stone. The curious touch about it all is that these 
 hardy blacks are naked to the blast, the idea being that, 
 as they must get wet, a cold clammy calico clinging to 
 their body is worse than a natural and normal nudity. 
 In fact, these droll Shila folk take this matter of dress 
 so seriously that they have worked out at a solution 
 exactly the opposite to ours. For the same man who 
 fishes in purls naturalihus can be seen, under broiling 
 vertical rays, sporting two blankets, our nude fishing 
 friend being now rolled up like a huge sausage in his 
 coils of calico. 
 
 A smile got the better of me when old Nyemba began 
 to speak seriously of " his goats," meaning the local 
 school of hippos. This note of proprietorship in his 
 possessive pronoun was smile-provoking when one re- 
 flected that the said hippos claimed old Nyemba 's fields 
 so very much as theirs ; ddes not each hippo sup on his 
 five bushels of vegetables per night without asking the 
 
466 THINKING BLACK 
 
 Chiefs permit ? On leaving, I reminded Nyemba of this 
 by way of a parting quip ; but a challenge of this kind 
 rarely finds him reluctant, so the old man bade me 
 condescend to wait a moment for obstinate, ocular proof 
 that the precious hippos were really his. In relating 
 what happened, I confine myself to facts, eschewing 
 imputations. The Chief mysteriously whistled up all 
 the local ladies, and made them group themselves on 
 the end of the island, the water, be it noted, as clear 
 as plate-glass, and for hours no hippo visible. Had not 
 I been searching for hippos the whole morning, pre- 
 pared to shoot upon the least hint of a ripple? Well, 
 at the Chiefs magician signal this band of women sent 
 out a weird shriek to the water, and as by a miracle 
 a school of five black hippo heads came up to the glassy 
 surface with a gasping roar as obedient salute. One 
 responsive glance they gave at the group of women, and 
 in a second all was calm again, the hippos bobbing below 
 water. Real living hippos, truth to tell, albeit I had 
 spent weary hours trying in vain to sight even one 
 for our larder, all declining obstinately to show up. Yet 
 here was old " black art" Nyemba with a school of hippos, 
 so to speak, hidden up his sleeve, the homelier diction 
 of the sleeveless Luban for this phrase being " hidden up 
 in his armpits." But the old Master of Ceremonies 
 resolved to " rub in " this idea of his proprietorship 
 of these hippos, so once again he made assurance doubly 
 sure. " Try again, my girls," he shouted to the women 
 waving his stafi" like a magician's wand ; and once more, 
 
[Frofn Stereography Under'aocd ir- Vnderzvood^ London. 
 
 FOUR THOUSAND POUNDS OF BEEF. 
 At 6d. the lot. 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 467 
 
 like a gramophone record, the same magic shriek rent 
 the same still air with the same magic appearance of 
 the hippos. I spent the whole night wondering what 
 this A.omo-hippo league meant at all at all, and — and I 
 am wondering still. Call it " black art " if you like, 
 I prefer to think of old Nyemba as an artful black : the 
 phenomenally long time these huge hippos were sub- 
 merged is not such a puzzle after all, for it seems as 
 if the hippo's very ungainly bulk is in its favour. That 
 is to say, with lungs full of air, his specific gravity 
 thereby becomes almost equal to that of water, with the 
 result that he can coolly walk or run along the bottom 
 of the river-bed as though it were dry land. 
 
 With a land of this sort that can boast not one 
 butcher's shop, sometimes the Missionary with his own 
 right arm can open up a long-shut tribe by a happy kill 
 of hippo — fancy thousands of pounds of beef for one 
 bang of a gun. The killing of one such monster gave 
 us our first footing on the Luapula. By a long detour 
 of miles and months here we come out on the Luapula, 
 strikino; the left bank a few miles below the Falls — 
 object : to pick a Mission site at Johnston Falls. ^ Ad- 
 vancing from the West this time has made the muddle, 
 for the ofi'-bank is agog with excitement, my quondam 
 friends "turned to be my enemies." Across the stream 
 they throw many a dainty morsel of black logic : " You 
 
 1 Mr. Pomeroy began here, then came Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, then Mr. 
 Campbell and others. The second phase of this station was when Mr. and 
 Mrs. Lamond and Mr. Sims retired back from the river to Kaleba, Mr. and 
 Mrs. Campbell branching off to begin work on Lake Bangwenlu. 
 
468 THINKING BLACK 
 
 came" (this is the sort of thing) " from the North only 
 three months ago, and now you come from the West, 
 therefore you are not you." My answer, of course, is 
 the eager echo : " I certainly am I, but you are not you, 
 because I guard the entente cordiale (Chvpivane) while 
 you set it at naught." There goes Chief after Chief filing 
 past on the off-bank with the biggest muster of guns 
 he ever made, every man of them munching this apple 
 of discord, " Why advance from the West, when you 
 came from the North ? " A reminder this, that in Central 
 Africa nearly all the polemics arise from our negro's 
 prejudices as to a suspected point of the compass — 
 instance, Sir Alfred Sharpe repelled for coming from the 
 East, and Hannington murdered because he entered 
 Buganda from Busoga. Nor avails it to reply like a 
 wordy windbag. Deeds are the only eloquent words in 
 such a fix, so I produced quite a knock-down argument 
 by — inviting the whole tribe to dine with us. Depend 
 upon it, the world's slums are all alike, slum street, slum 
 town, or slum tribe, and the simplest solution is — to open 
 a huge soup kitchen, free tickets for Chiefs and slaves. 
 This is that line of least resistance so inelegantly rendered 
 in the Luapula alliterative proverb, " Brow of brass, but 
 belly of butter." Curious way of capturing a tribe, 
 camping on its utmost border and asking your enemies 
 out — to supper. Without money and without price 
 those soup tickets— and no wonder ! For the net local 
 cost of my four tons of hippo-meat worked out at the 
 round sum of — sixpence. Eight thousand nine hundred 
 
BLACK MAN = BLACK MANNERS 469 
 
 and eighty pounds of meat, not at 6d. per lb., but the 
 whole 8980 lb. costing a single and solitary sixpence. 
 
 This is how it came about. Slipping over to the 
 hostile bank by stealth at sundown, I killed a monster 
 hippo in its very best days. Tried the temple shot, and 
 the bullet zigzagged through the brain — magic bullet 
 that, for did it not metaphorically slay also the enmity of 
 my hundreds of enemies ? Listen to yonder glad cry on 
 the ofF-bank ; the news catches on, drums beating and 
 clouds of canoes darting across in the dusk to verify the 
 kill. Canoes, nota bene, yet there were no such things in 
 these latitudes yesterday — oh no, scarcely knew what a 
 canoe was. Now^ where the carcass is, there are the 
 vultures gathered together — and in boats, too. Yesterday 
 they shot angry glances at us — now, picture the same 
 softened eyes with that dreamy look one sees in a kitten's 
 when it smells frying fish. Yesterday they were lolling 
 in the sun, a tribe of indolents. Here they are at a later 
 phase rushing on this beef with the tense concentration of 
 a crowd making for the refreshment-room at a station 
 where the train stops three minutes. But do not quote 
 too quickly against them Paul's " whose god is their 
 belly " ; do so, and you are at the bad old business of 
 beating a cripple with his own crutches. He has got a 
 reason, and here it comes. That is to say, such a serious 
 chemist is this negro, that if you give him plain flour 
 with no " relish," he will go to bed hungry rather than 
 touch mere carbo-hydrates without the adequate albumi- 
 noids. In other words, that ravenous shriek of his you 
 
470 THINKING BLACK 
 
 hear at the hippo banquet has one meaning only — 
 Nitrogen ! Why is it that the African alone has special- 
 ised here and coined a word for " meat-hunger " (Kashia) ? 
 Why a special substantive if not that there is a specially 
 substantial craving behind it ? He ravens on that meat, 
 his very blood and bone crying out like chemists for the 
 needed nitrogen. Red raw flesh covered with blood is the 
 thing beloved of the negro — torn off the animal just after 
 it has been shot, muscles still quivering. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 *'The Year of Love": an Epilogue 
 
"For while the tired waves dimly breaking 
 Seem here no painful inch to gain, 
 Far out, by creeks and inlets waking, 
 Comes silent, flooding in, the main." 
 
 "The noisy waves are a failure, but the silent tide 
 
 is a success." Phillips Brooks. 
 
 "Such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
 
 Too full for sound and foam." Tennyson. 
 
 4n 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Epilogue 
 
 [Luanza.) 
 
 KNOW ye, therefore, that unquenchable hope was 
 crowned at last, for the glad year 1905 was 
 termed Mwaka wa Lusa, or " the Year of Love." 
 Somebody drew blank when he said that Hope makes a 
 good breakfast but a bad supper, for there is no throb of 
 joy akin to the darkest hour merging into dawn. For 
 look what befell us. At Koni, Johnston Falls, and 
 Luanza it was the same story and the same time. 
 
 All these sterile years the Gospel had been stored up 
 in Garenganze folk mentally, like so much sound money 
 that returned no interest. They listened, and they 
 watched us with their ferret eyes, and, of course, they had 
 their difficult questions to ask, yet answer some of them 
 we could not. I admire your African, because you can 
 never get out of a difficulty with him under the fog of a 
 definition. He may have a funny figure-of-eight twist 
 in his query, but it is always to the point. Alas ! the 
 average white man's remarks to the negro, though lacking 
 point, are always pointed. The story of these long sterile 
 years of sowing was supremely simple from the African's 
 standpoint. Intruding, as we had done, into his darkness 
 
 473 
 
474 THINKING BLACK 
 
 with our Gospel of God, the said Gospel made too prepos- 
 terous and impossible a claim upon him. Hence his blunt 
 black challenge to the Missionary : " Well, you just sit 
 down here and live your Gospel for twenty years or so, 
 and then we will believe you." Thus, for nearly a genera- 
 tion, did the negro's face set in those obstinate lines of 
 Christ-rejection so well known to us, and it has taken all 
 that time for the truth to get home to his hard heart that 
 all our Gospelling was not the mere effusion of a passing 
 excitement. This " pegging away " is what the African 
 calls " the pertinacity of a fly," the compliment being 
 equivocal, as most African flies have a sting in them. 
 Some flies, like some Missionaries, even give " sleeping 
 sickness" — a curious sort of jag that must be if it makes 
 you sleep instead of wakening you up. And " stiog " is 
 the very idea in bush-preaching, for the unblushing sin 
 forces Evangelist to be as plain as John Bunyan. Hence 
 that negro obstinacy, and, if you have only pertinacity 
 enough, the said obstinacy can easily work out at 
 malignity. Mr. Pecksniff has not yet been born in 
 Central Africa, and, as we have seen, the nude negro has 
 nude sjDeech : one cheery old gentleman used to exhort 
 us in the pros and cons of this attack of ours on the 
 citadel of the negro soul. " Remember," said he, " if you 
 hit the body only on one spot you will soon raise a lump." 
 This is true enough, for although you can easily laugh and 
 chat yourselves into the good graces of a negro, yet 
 remember that is only the nominal surface black man you 
 have conciliated. Scratch this coloured Russian on the 
 
EPILOGUE 475 
 
 subject of sill and you verily find a Tartar. The hint of 
 obstinacy is seen in tlie very set of the jaw. No, mere 
 sophistry will not break him, and only the power of God 
 can make him throw the doors of his nature open to the 
 Christ. But the " raising of a lump " is only one side of 
 the " pegging-away " story, and the very cheery face of 
 our old exhorter was enough to make you ask where his 
 lump was after so much sermon-tasting. " But," says 
 this old man, " there is another aspect to this Gospel- 
 thumping of yours, and remember also, white man, 
 that if you beat the drum on one spot only you will crack 
 it." Sure enough, the very next day one of the biggest 
 drums the Devil owned in the country was cracked. 
 
 B was a notorious thief who had been in the Belgian 
 
 chain more than once, and many a time he had wept, not 
 the tears of penitence, but of revolt. For years, with a 
 customary placidity, he had gone the hard way of 
 rebellion. " Wasted" was the word my pen had almost 
 tricked me into writing concerning the pile of religious 
 ammunition directed against all such. But " is not My 
 AVord a Hammer ? " said the Lord, and that holy hammer 
 broke him. For what the Congo law could not do (by 
 sjambok and chain), in that it was weak through Butugu's 
 sinful flesh, God did in power. Ah, there is nothing 
 breaks the rebel's back like the flash of memory — "My 
 God hath remembered me." 
 
 Leading up to this "Year of Love," what was the raw 
 native's line of defence, or had he any ? Slaves, for 
 instance, whose souls were ploughed with the ploughshare 
 
476 THINKING BLACK 
 
 of anguish, why did they not troop under the Christ's 
 banner ? The curious answer is found in their deep-seated 
 idea that this only was of God, this, the raw heathendom 
 in which God had caused them to be born. Not once, 
 but a hundred times, have I heard the native claim " God " 
 as the Author of it all. " God's law " [Mukanda wa Leza) 
 was the phrase for all their tribal customs, and the very 
 variety of men and manners on the face of the earth was 
 their argument against the unity that is in Christ. There 
 are genuine phrases that have gone the round of the 
 Garenganze for centuries, which, literally translated, look 
 like the language of pious resignation : " Ah, God's time 
 has not come yet." "Had it been God's gift to you, you 
 would have got it." "God is great: whoever conquered 
 Him? He killeth even the aristocrats." And so on, in 
 dark fatalistic sing-song, the name of God bandied about 
 on every subject, and blowing in on the soul like a cold 
 Arctic blast. I have met serious students of theology 
 who were embarrassed because the Africans have no idea 
 of Satan and his sinister personality, whereas the real 
 puzzle would be to find out how they could possibly know 
 of the existence of a specific fallen angel named Diabolus, 
 alias Satan. The master-stroke of the Devil is that he, 
 in Africa, has not only lied most subtly all the centuries 
 against God, but has hidden himself behind his own lie. 
 
 "And so they've voted the Devil out 
 And of course the Devil's gone, 
 But simple people would like to know 
 Who carries his business on." 
 
EPILOGUE 477 
 
 Yet God was over all even then, and in some crude 
 sense these poor wanderers from Him were under a 
 schoolmaster leading them to Christ. Crudely, granted, 
 yet even Paul dignifies that intuition of theirs by the 
 exalted name of " law " when he insists that they, too, are 
 a "law unto themselves." One of the strongest threads 
 in the fabric of their national life is the austere creed of 
 taboo, and here is a fresh "as we go to press" example. 
 Just a minute ago I tried hard to get a tiny boy named 
 Kasongo to eat a fish. Pinched with hunger, here was a 
 little nipper with no "moral" backbone, yet he shut his 
 milk teeth, and defied all my entreaty. No, he dare not 
 break tribal taboo, dare not touch fish, wheedle him as 
 you may. Poor superstition of course it all is, but at 
 least the negro breed is thereby stronger in grit and 
 tenacity of purpose, and in some sense this loyalty to law- 
 keeping does not soften the fibre of his black mind. In 
 fact, the day this type of negro weeps for sin will be the 
 same glorious date when that very negro will welcome 
 Christ into his life by the front door of fearlessness and 
 not by the back door of cowardice. Nor will you need to 
 spend long hours indoctrinating him with ideas as to the 
 sanctity of law per se. He has got that in his bones, for 
 in his own tribal taboo did he not "play the game"? 
 Thus Christ subjugates all things unto Himself, and 
 instead of casting away the old spear of taboo, he now 
 converts it into a Gospel ploughshare. Is there no taboo 
 in the Ecclesia ? I trow there is. Are there no holy 
 
 " thou shalt not's " in Christianity ? And did the negro 
 29 
 
478 THINKING BLACK 
 
 not spend his life learning how sacred even a human 
 " thou shalt not " can be ? 
 
 Then, again, quite a bright streak of hope is seen in 
 the conversion of chiefs of honourable status in the land. 
 
 K , one of these, tells his conversion in a manly, 
 
 precise way. Chief on the Bukongolo Range, he says he 
 often came down from the hills to attend the meetings, 
 ay, even in the rain he made a try to be there. " Believe ? " 
 says he; "No, I wore out two gospel halls in Christ- 
 rejection." Quaint idea to think of wearing out a hall as 
 you wear out an old pair of boots. The first mud hall 
 was eaten by white ants and had to be replaced by an- 
 other, and as K saw even a third hall while yet a rebel 
 
 at heart, this poignant fact was the straw that broke the 
 camel's back : " I have actually worn out two meeting- 
 houses in Christ-rejection." No beauty he, only one of 
 the old cut-throats who did Mushidi's dirty work for a 
 dirty reward. But the Gospel has even done something 
 for his ugly face, for the old doggy and insinuating leer is 
 gone and the gleam of the life eternal shoots out of the 
 eyes. How true that a negro's black face is, after all, not 
 the same thing as his countenance ! God makes a man's 
 face,but a man makes his own countenance. Certainly hand- 
 some is as handsome does in Africa, and old K has got 
 
 one thing at any rate out of Christianity, for the dynamic 
 of the Cross sends him to bed with a sweet mouth and 
 a clean mind. At first, all alone in his own town, he had a 
 hard battle, the saved chief and his wilful people being at 
 daggers drawn. Christ seemingly, as of yore, had not 
 
EPILOGUE 479 
 
 come to send peace in their midst, but a sword, and the 
 old tug-of-war between right and wrong began. No 
 sugar-plum expressions here, for light fights darkness 
 with a glittering blade, the gleam being all the brighter 
 in the inky blackness. Like a living tree in a timber- 
 yard, he grew nobly, and now, after six years, he has won 
 a small nucleal band of Christians who daily meet in 
 his town. Thus those stunted, stifled souls at long last get 
 a chance. Like a toy town hall in the centre of his village 
 you can descry a nice schoolhouse he has built for his 
 people. 
 
 Too many Africans see Christ in a book as we see 
 places in a map, but here is a genuine case of a young 
 man converted by merely reading John's Gospel. Too 
 big for our elementary school, he went his own way in sin, 
 but still clung to his copy of John as a fetish. Then old 
 Africa — the Africa of sin and sorrow — ^began to wind its 
 tentacles round him, and he was speedily becoming the 
 usual bleared-of-eye negro with whom Jesus Christ is the 
 Great Unmentionable in his unhallowed hut. But he 
 was reckoning without God and the Word of God, which 
 is not bound — did he not still cling to his copy of John's 
 Gospel ? Well, watch the divine logic of events involved 
 in the treasure of a truth that " where the word of a King 
 is, there is powder." One day the gun-cotton of John's 
 Gospel came in contact with the tinder of his rebellion, 
 
 and this K was literally exploded into the kingdom. 
 
 For out from the pages of " John of the Bosom " came the 
 assertive call, " Follow Me ! " and that one word rugged 
 
480 THINKING BLACK 
 
 off the terrible tentacles frora his soul. K can only 
 
 explain his conversion in the quaintly choice words : " I 
 was startled to find that Christ could speak Chiluba. I 
 heard Him speak out of the printed page, and what He 
 said was, 'Follow Me ! ' " And then it was he entered the 
 new era of reading the Old Book, for was it not a fact 
 that now God was staring out at him from every page, 
 and shouting in his ears ? Those rays of light that darted 
 out of Galilee long ago have lit up these poor dark glens 
 with gladness. Simply and satisfyingly a soul settles for 
 eternity on the living Word of God. An old negro chief 
 from the South end has just sent in a message to his 
 brethren here, and there is the same ring of assurance as 
 to the Word of God. " Tell my brethren at Luanza," 
 says he, " that Christ keeps me down here all alone by 
 the Gospel according to Mark." The only portion of the 
 Bible he has, to him " Mark " equates the whole revelation 
 of God, and even " Romans " and " Ephesians " are only 
 portions of the great " Marko," his first and faithful friend. 
 Sterile though the soil be, the seed is the Word of God : 
 you may count the apples on the tree, but who can count 
 the trees in the apple ? You may tell the acorns on the 
 oak, but not the oaks in the acorn. 
 
 Yet such thick lips can drop pearls. It is delightful 
 to see God taking up these Gentiles, and speaking with 
 other lips and a stammering tongue, stiff old phrases 
 going into the melting-pot of negro mouths and being 
 poured out in fresh fluidity. " The Book of Acts," for 
 instance, becomes "Words concerning Deeds"; "the 
 
EPILOGUE 481 
 
 Lord's Table " becomes the " Feast of Memories," or the 
 " Table of Tears " ; and as worship is in the spirit they 
 have cleverly coined the verb ** to spirit " as the true 
 ideal of approach to God, for what but spirit can reach 
 " The Spirit " ? Perceive the astute negro at this most 
 sensible word-coinage, for pepa is the verb " to spirit," 
 just as, say, " a drink " is a noun with "to drink *' as its 
 satellite verb. Sensible all this surely, for there you 
 have an otherwise materialistic negro ignoring the mere 
 sight of his eyeballs and talking away to nothing visible 
 with shut eyes — he is " spiriting," i.e. worshipping. Deep- 
 sea sounding some of their happy thoughts are. ** Eter- 
 nity," for example, is called "the lifetime of God 
 Almighty," and the gift of Life Eternal is merely a 
 pledge that they will live as long as God lives, eternal 
 death being " a dying as long as God is living." When 
 you, their white teacher, blunder along in your exposition 
 it is not uncommon to see a far-away look on your 
 hearers' faces, painfully suggestive of the fact that they 
 are all off on a scent of their own I For what to you 
 may be a mere commonplace of normal Christian thought 
 — "Book of Acts," for example — is to him full of sweet, 
 subtle suggestion — " Words about Deeds " — a full current 
 of new thought switched on. Sure, here it is we all learn 
 how much we have yet to learn, every truth in Africa 
 being like a bit of Labrador spar — it has no lustre as 
 you turn it in your hand until you come to a particular 
 angle, then it shows deep and beautiful colours. But 
 what if you miss the said angle precisely when your 
 
482 THINKING BLACK 
 
 negro spies it ? This fact it is tliat sends your audience 
 off on its own, the speaker losing the lustre at the precise 
 moment when the black man has caught the accurate 
 angle of flashing light. Thus, in Africa, what you do 
 not say is often more eloquent than your long windy 
 homily. Yes, black as coal every one of them ; yet, after 
 all, diamonds are made of soot, albeit the how, when, and 
 where of the miracle we may not know. Moreover, it 
 doth not yet appear what this black land of ours shall 
 be, but we know that God with swift, silent steps can 
 come and give the crystallising touch that makes the 
 diamond flash out of the quondam soot. " Rags," the 
 Arabs call our black parishioners, forgetful of the fact that 
 rags make the whitest paper : so what man can do in the 
 paper line surely God can surpass in souls. 
 
 Quite a serious theologian the negro becomes, and here 
 it is, greatly daring, he taps all the unsuspected sources of 
 language. In the things of God this young black Christian 
 is in some sense a sort of negro Columbus setting out to 
 discover a new world of wonder. His word for " heaven " 
 is a good example of the Luban's finesse and regard 
 for detail, coupled with a knowledge of sound philology. 
 Shells we find on the beach, for pearls we must dive, and 
 most appropriately has he dived for this great pearl- word 
 " heaven " — is not each gate of The Glory a pearl ? The 
 plain philology of this word " Mwiulu," then, gives you 
 the meaning of " heaven " as " the entering into all the 
 highest times, and places, and manners, and methods of 
 living life." This means that Christians, as " the heavenly 
 
EPILOGUE 483 
 
 people," are, literally and not exaggeratingly, " the folks 
 who enter into all the highest places, plus the highest 
 times, plus the very highest manners, plus the only first- 
 class methods of service." Far from this long definition 
 sucking all the juice out of such a luscious fruit as the 
 word "heaven," a negro at my elbow claims that I have 
 omitted two links in the chain of meaning : the link of 
 cause, and the link of design. So that while the entering 
 into all the highest times, highest places, highest manners, 
 highest methods is ours, we must not omit this entering 
 into life's highest causes and highest designs also ! No 
 chance example this, as dozens of instances prove. Take 
 another. If you quote the Psalm to him, " Our times are 
 in Thy hand," he will be forced to translate it in the 
 gorgeous words — " All my life's why's and when's and 
 where's and wherefore's are in God's hand ! " The sane 
 grammar of this is that particles of space are all necessarily 
 units of time, place, manner, and degree (just as in 
 English we say " the space between the table and the 
 door," and " the space of half an hour"). 
 
 Simple in strength and strong in simplicity, the best 
 sort of young black Christian delights to push out into 
 the adjacent hamlets with the Gospel. Far from being 
 professional preachers, they " talk" the Gospel — a straight 
 talk in his own town being more tantalising to a raw 
 negro than a hundred sermons. For in a sermon he 
 knows where he is (or rather, you do, for he often nods), 
 but these terribly personal talks jag him into contrition. 
 After all, there is no need for shooting at sparrows with 
 
484 THINKING BLACK 
 
 heavy artillery, and Africa's true evangelisation begins 
 when the simple negroes start to talk about redeeming 
 love among themselves. No English twang or mannerisms 
 in that negro talk. With the converted African, Christ's 
 mercy, like the water in a vase, takes the shape of the 
 vessel that holds it. Your constant joy is to hear in a 
 foreign lingo some simple old fact of faith taking a new 
 meaning by one twist of the negro tongue. Here is a 
 Chief who takes up the cudgels for his abandoned (?) race, 
 and claims that if the Gospel is really for everybody then 
 they have as much right as we to an offer of same. To 
 meet his challenge, I read out the record of the impotent 
 man at Bethesda, and venture to urge that here is one who 
 has the same complaint as ignored Africa : " Sir, I have 
 no man." So we get the opening, and advancing into 
 the salvation of the subject I tell that tale of divine cure 
 — the cure of the man that had no man to help while 
 others got the good things. Then we come to the point. 
 What I now want is an assurance from my petulant Chief 
 that here at last he understands my drift. "Oh," he 
 said, " that is very simple: the thirty-eight-years-sick man 
 is like unto our abandoned Africa ; the man said, / have 
 no man, but Christ said, Tm your Man." 
 
L'ENVOI 
 
 jy^^ i'" "" "'" ^'^' " ^^^^ "/ >- -- '^-^ 
 
 # M Lubaland. T'he first sough of the cold night wind 
 goes through like a dart. 'The distant dogs in the 
 fishing hamlet howl. The frogs croak^ croaky and the bitterns 
 bumpy bump. To climax weirdness, the fire has recently 
 swept through the long yellow grasSy covering the land with 
 a dark pall. The sluggish stream by which we camp seems 
 a mere trickle of liquid mud^ the only hint of water being the 
 deeper dye of green down its hollow. There you draw your 
 drinking water the colour of bad tea ; there, toOy at sunset 
 the reed-buck comes down to drink. And as the darkness 
 deepens the sighing sounds of Africa s dark are heard saying — 
 
 " THE NIGHT COMETH WHEN NO MAN CAN WORK:' 
 
 Afar the Golden-Crested Crane is calling ! 
 
 ibb 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbreviated names, 428, 429. 
 Abstract, The, 279-281. 
 Acacia thorn, 366. 
 Acacias, 202, 386, 393, 402, 
 Achokwe, 12. 
 
 Acts, The Book of the, 480, 481. 
 Africa, Topsy-turvy, 70, 230, 371. 
 Vastness of, map facing 164. 
 " sunny fountains," 439. 
 African, The debased, 143, 144, 442. 
 diet, 99, 100, 316, 413. 
 "Divide," The, 20. 
 forests, 315, 353, 375 ff. 
 hamlets, 88, 144, 347, 439-442. 
 hunter, 436-439. 
 ladies, 51, 52, 105. 
 liars, 78-80. 
 
 names for white men, 21, 22. 
 orphan, An, 453. 
 
 sayings, 249, 252, 313. See Sayings, 
 skies, 99, 153. 
 winter, 72, 335. 
 Albert, King, 414. 
 Alexander, Czar, 195. 
 Alice in Wonderland, 59, 136, 449. 
 Alma, 304. 
 
 Amazon, A negro, 232. 
 American Missionaries, 37, 50, 51, 113, 
 
 204. 
 Amos, 432. 
 
 Amputation of arm, 457, 459. 
 Ancient Britons, 7, 140, 326, 352. 
 Anderson, Mr. and Mrs., 467. 
 Andriane, killed by cannibals, 330. 
 Anglo-Bantu, 56. 
 Angola, 3. 
 Animals — 
 
 Ant-bear, 334, 357. 
 
 Antelopes, 87, 88, 231, 313, 348, 366. 
 
 Badger, 370. 
 
 Boar, "Wild, 348. 
 
 Buck, Red, 87, 88, 269. 
 
 Reed, 485. 
 Crocodiles, 83, 274, 324, 433-435, 459, 
 Dogs, 52, 95, 244, 272-274, 348. 
 
 Animals — continued. 
 
 Elephants. See under name. 
 
 Indian, 257-259. 
 Fish, 88, 89, 168, 413, 477. 
 Frogs, 54, 485. 
 Gnu, 162. 
 Goats, 232, 336. 
 Hippos, 426, 462-470. 
 Hyena, 55, 296. 
 Jackals, 88, 162, 385. 
 Leeches, 435, 436. 
 Leopards, 106, 461. 
 Lions. See under name. 
 Monkeys, 84, 85, 86, 315, 316. 
 Pigs, 53, 54. 
 Rabbit, 175. 
 Ratel, 370. 
 Rats, 312, 324. 
 Snails, 52, 95, 312. 
 Snakes, 52, 251, 252, 324, 385. 
 Boa-constrictors, 313-315. 
 Mamba, 252. 
 Toads, 54. 
 Zebras, 164, 231. 
 Anne of Austria, 385. 
 Annexation, Attempted, 300. 
 Ant-bear, The, 334, 357. 
 Antelopes, 87, 88, 231, 348. 
 killed by rinderpest, 366. 
 Lost, 313. 
 Ant-hills, 114, 322, 386. 
 Ants as food, 312, 385. 
 Antiquity, 76, 234. 
 Anton, Mr. and Mrs., 319, 354, 355. 
 Appleyard, 280. 
 Apprenticeship, African, 50. 
 Arabs, Bitter blasphemy of, 199. 
 building Mushidi's palace, 168. 
 canoes, 398. 
 
 contrasted with Europeans, 200, 201. 
 condemned to death, 201-203. 
 consult lion king, 267. 
 Danger from, 326. 
 den, 398. 
 designs, 342. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Arabs' domination broken, 330. 
 
 in Mushidi's capital, 190, 199. 
 
 leader, 361. 
 
 lines, Slipi)ing through, 343. 
 
 Murdered by, 246. 
 
 name for negroes, 95, 482. 
 
 on Kilwa Island, 361. 
 
 prayers, 199, 200. 
 
 provide wife for Mushidi, 295. 
 
 raiders, 415. 
 
 Roaming, 203. 
 
 sayings, 81, 230, 
 
 scouts, 403. 
 
 slavers, 32, 
 
 tradition, An, 462. 
 Arethusa, The, 403. 
 Arguments of cannibals, 337, 340, 
 
 341. 
 Aristotle, 240, 440. 
 Arithmetic, African, 278. 
 Arnold, Matthew (quoted), 298. 
 Arnot, Mr. and Mrs.. 74, 209, 415. 
 Arrows, Poisoned, 268, 352, 353. 
 Ashley Downs orphans, 210. 
 Asking questions, 140, 450, 454. 
 Atlantic, Farewell to the, 33. 
 Attacked by hippo, 465. 
 Axe thrown at boy, 333, 334. 
 
 Babies, African, 144. 
 Baby-betrothal, 452. 
 Baby cutting its teeth, 236-238. 
 
 drowned iu Lake, 237. 
 
 hippos, 463, 464. 
 
 Newborn, 124. 
 
 pioneers, 18, 19. 
 
 The Mission, 416. 
 Babylon, A Black, 167, 192, 193. 
 Badger's distillery, 370. 
 Bagdad, British Consul at, 257. 
 Bagsters, One of the Bible, 37. 
 Bailombo, The, 34. 
 Bailundu, 37. 
 Bainbridge, 405. 
 Ballad, English, 122. 
 Bamboo, 348, 388. 
 Bamboo lightning conductor, 349. 
 Bananas, 85, 323. 
 Bangweulu, 428, 429, 467. 
 Bantu, 280, 281, 340. 
 
 ideas, 10, 231, 271. 
 
 of the boots, 61. 
 
 saying, 2, 454. 
 
 song, 8. 
 
 tribes, 8, 9. 
 Bantubonge, 331. 
 Barbarians, 96. 
 
 Barley wine of Xenophon, 222. 
 Barotse Valley, 204. 
 Bartimseus, Sermon on, 241. 
 
 Barttelot, Major — Murder of, 303. 
 
 Baskets of food, 217. 
 
 Batelela, 332. 
 
 Bay tree, A green, 228. 
 
 Bearded tribe. A, 183. 
 
 Beast-precedent, 231, 232, 340. 
 
 Beasts in prophecy, 241. 
 
 not immortal, 272, 
 Beer, 120, 260. 
 Beetles, Dor, 338. 
 Beeton, Mrs., 105, 106. 
 Belgse iu England, 326. 
 Belgians, 258, 300. 
 
 and British advance, 150. 
 
 arrive at Mushidi's, 302. 
 
 flag, 301. See Congo. 
 
 Fort, 319, 326-329. 
 
 King, 300, 414, 460. 
 
 mistaken for English, 305. 
 
 officers killed by cannibals, 330. 
 
 proclamation, 307. 
 Bell, Peter, 360. 
 
 Belmonte, Silva Porto of, 32, 74. 
 Benguella, The "Western Zanzibar, 32. 
 
 Landing at, 4. 
 
 Nearest bank at, 69. 
 
 road, 184. 
 
 Slavery at, 27, 28, 30, 
 
 Waiting at, 7fif., 20, 
 Bethesda, 484. 
 
 Betting three beads, 352, 353. 
 " Beyond the Sea" innovations, 4. 
 Bia of the Guides, Captain, 303. 
 Bible-School, The, 446. 
 Bible Society of Scotland, 205. 
 Bicycling in the trail, 381. 
 Big game hunter, 291. 
 Big kill of hippo meat, 467-469. 
 Bihe, 7, 41, 143. 
 
 Early days in, 37, 50, 65, 445. 
 
 Journey to, 31, 34. 
 
 Slaves journeying to, 31, 47. 
 Biheau dynasty falls, 74. 
 
 guide, 161. 
 
 slaver, 30. 
 Biheans, 32, 185. 
 Billy Bray, 69. 
 
 Bird, Cyril and Mrs., 137, 138, 163. 
 Birds killed at one shot, 400. 
 
 on Mweru, 399. 
 Birds — 
 
 Bittern, 485. 
 
 Cormorants, 399. 
 
 Cranes, 399, 485. 
 
 Curlew, 399. 
 
 Darters, 371, 399. 
 
 Ducks, 124, 441. 
 Tree, 399. 
 
 Eagles, 116. 
 
 Egrets, 371. 
 
INDEX 
 
 B I RDS — continued. 
 
 Flamingo, 399. 
 
 Fowls, 116, 397, 413. 
 
 Goose, Sjmrwing, 399. 
 
 Herons, 399. 
 
 Honey-bird, 382, 383. 
 
 This religiosa, 399. 
 
 King-fishers, 399. 
 
 Lily-trotters, 399. 
 
 Nseva, 400. 
 
 Parakeet, 48. 
 
 Parrot (Story), 104. 
 
 Partridge, 48, 413, 416. 
 
 Pelicans, 399. 
 
 Plovers, Spur-winged, 399. 
 
 Sandpipers, 399. 
 
 Storks, 400-402. 
 
 Swallows, 275. 
 
 Toucan, 125. 
 
 Vultures, 116, 162. 
 
 Waterfowl, 399. 
 
 AVater-rails, 399. 
 
 Woodpecker, 416. 
 Black and white. Nothing down in. 174. 
 Black Portuguese, 33. 
 
 Thinking. See Thinking Black. 
 Blackburn quoted, 130. 
 Blacksmiths, 275, 276, 448, 449. 
 Black water fever, 137, 316. 
 Blank cheques, God's, 69. 
 Blanket, The negro's, 71, 465. 
 Blocked roads, 6, 9, 10, 119, 213, 342. 
 Blue sky, 99, 153. 
 Bluebeard, An African, 229, 232. 
 Blue-bottle flies, 229, 292. 
 Boa-constrictors, 313-315. 
 
 names, 3vt6, 428, 429. 
 Boar, Wild, 348. 
 Bodson, Captain, 305, 307. 
 Bodyguard, Mushidi's, 307. 
 Boers and Portuguese, 75. 
 Bog, Grossing the, 136. 
 Boiling a watch, 176. 
 Bonia, 300. 
 
 Boncliamps, Marquis de, 305, 307, 312. 
 Bone kills croc, 435. 
 Book of Nature, The, 151, 277. 
 Booth, General ((^uoted), 92. 
 Boots and bare feet, 375, 376. 
 
 not for desert sands, 157. 
 
 Portuguese convict's, 214. 
 Borassus palm, 386. 
 "Boring," 33, 116, 406, 411. 
 Born in the morning, 395. 
 
 white, 4. 
 Boys, African and English, 53. 
 
 in Luvaleland, 145. 
 Brain, 278, 279, 355. 
 Brasseur, Captain, 326. 
 Breaking up of Mushidi's, 304. 
 
 Bridging gulf to spirit- world, 262. 
 British, Approach of the, 343. 
 
 and Belgian advance, 150. 
 
 Museum sculptures, 315. 
 Britons, Ancient, 7, 140, 188, 326, 
 
 352. 
 Broken earthenware, 186. 
 Brooks, Phillips, 472. 
 Brother, Mushidi's, 269. 
 Browning, 20. 
 Bryant and May's, 252. 
 Buck, Red, 87, 88, 269. 
 Buganda, 468. 
 
 Bukongolo Range, 414, 415, 458, 478. 
 Bulawayo, The Mines at, 104. 
 Bull of the herd, 232. 
 Bulletin, False as a, 179, 288. 
 Bullets, Mushidi's, 268, 269. 
 
 or hoe, 173. 
 Buukeya, 197, 221, 311, 319. 
 
 Hills, The, 209. 
 
 imprisoned at, 9. 
 
 negroes, 306. 
 
 onlv white man at, 169. 
 Burial at midnight, 132. 
 Buried alive, 12, 452, 453. 
 Burning of Missionary's house, 11, 416. 
 Burton, Sir Richard, 18, 120, 166, 277, 
 
 410. 
 Bush-preaching, 474. Sec Preaching. 
 Busoga, 468. 
 Butembo forest, 337. 
 Buying name, 22. 
 
 road, 121. 
 
 Cadenhead, 257, 259. 
 Caesar (([uoted), 188. 
 Calais, 414. 
 
 Calendar of knotted cord, 175. 
 Calico and beads, 117. 
 
 coat, 398. 
 
 Present of, 214. 
 
 Stolen, 121. 
 Calvary, Gambling at, 271. 
 Cameron, Lovett, 184, 299. 
 Campbell, Mr., 319, 415, 467. 
 Camping, 35, 65. 
 Canadian Missionary, A, 210. 
 Candles injure eyesight, 250. 
 Cannibals, 95, 423. 
 Cannibal arguments, 340, 341. 
 
 atrocities, 331 ff. 
 
 dirge, 337, 339. 
 
 Meeting of, 424, 425. 
 
 soldiers, 330. 
 
 taught sanitation, 440. 
 
 vampires, 337. 
 
 workers on railway, 111. 
 Canoe eaten by lions, 367. 
 
 man, An old, 404, 405. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Canoes, Begging for, 397. 
 
 destroyed by hippos, 426. 
 Cape, The, 300. 
 Captivity Epistles, The, 198. 
 Caravan, Cook of the, 67, 68. 
 
 Forming the, 65. 
 
 Government, 338. 
 
 like Lord Mayor's Show, 213. 
 
 Missionary, 12, 17, 107, 291. 
 
 plundering, 12, 139, 185, 291. 
 
 Slave, 28, 163. 
 
 Trading, 75. 
 Carnivora, 340, 367. 
 Carpenters, Training of, 446. 
 Carpentry, 417. 
 Carrier, Death of a, 132. 
 Carriers, 17, 18. 
 
 Engaging, 66 ff. 
 
 revolt, 67, 163. 
 
 Waiting for, 19. 
 
 Weary, 97. 
 Carter, 257, 258, 259. 
 "Cartwheel " track, 7, 107, 115. 
 Cassava poison, 82. 
 " Catch -your-pal" movement, 9. 
 Caterpillars as food, 313. 
 Cathedral of the dead, 264. 
 Catumbella Hills, 27, 33. 
 
 purchasers of slaves, 28. 
 Caves, Driven into, 415. 
 
 Shut up in a, 291-294. 
 Chamunda, Prince, 175, 295. 
 Chaplain to the troops, 330. 
 "Charlie," 370. 
 Chenda or Pilgrim Town, 51. 
 Cheques, God's blank, 69. 
 Chicago pig-killing, 54. 
 Chief, Chofwe, 336. 
 
 Conversion of, 246, 478, 480. 
 
 Fisher, 244. 
 
 flys to Luanza, 246. 
 
 Funerals of, 285 ff., 453. 
 
 gives concession at Luanza, 414. 
 
 Kapwasa, 394. 
 
 Luban (quoted), 26. 
 
 Native, 116, 117. 
 
 Nkuva, 236, 237. 
 
 Present of, 214. 
 
 Swiva, 337-340. 
 
 See Rob Roy. 
 Chigoes, 198. 
 Children betting, 352, 353. 
 
 Hands of, 443. 
 Chilolo Ntambo, 361, 362, 363, 365. 
 Chiluba, 191, 480. 
 Chimneys, 169. 
 Chiniunwa's brother, 454. 
 Chinde, 6, 33, 411. 
 Chiiiuma, 360. 
 Chisamba, 50, 204. 
 
 Chisenga, Death at, 82. 
 
 Chiwala blocks the road, 342. 
 
 Chloroform, 457, 459. 
 
 Chofwe, Chief, 336. 
 
 Chokwe country, 28, 113, 116, 132. 
 
 Chona, 295. 
 
 Funeral sacrifices of, 287-290. 
 
 War camp of, 126. 
 Christ and Temple sellers, 30. 
 
 Triumph trophy of, 223, 
 Christians, Negro, 355, 356, 398. See 
 
 Conversions. 
 Cicero, 26, 43, 277. 
 Circular objects, 114. 
 Clarke, Mr., 319. 
 Clement's word, 155. 
 Climate, The effect of, 5, 41, 152. 
 Climbing a mountain, 350. 
 Clocks and watches, 176, 177. 
 Cobbe, Benjamin, 101, 212, 415. 
 "Cobweb path," 9, 10. 
 Cobwebs, Breaking the, 447. 
 Cocoa cultivation, Slaves for, 29. 
 Coddling the converts, 104. 
 Coilantogle Ford, 122. 
 Coillard, M., 204. 
 " Coil of rope," A, 314, 315. 
 Coimbra, Senhor, 184. 
 Coleridge, 43. 
 Colonies, Portuguese, 5. 
 Combers, The, 204. 
 Commandant, Made a, 325 ff. 
 Compass, Points of the, 468. 
 Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur (quoted), 130. 
 Congo, The, 2, 3, 23, 204, 402. 
 
 basin, The, 163. 
 
 flag. The, 303, 306. 
 
 Free State, 29, 246, 300, 301, 302. 
 
 Law, 475. 
 
 Mouth of the, 6. 
 
 Names of, 23. 
 
 Source of the, 112. 
 
 The realm of, 2, 3. 
 Conversions, 154, 155, 354, 355, 473 AT. 
 
 of Chief, 246, 478. 
 
 of young man, 479. 
 Converts, Coddling the, 104. 
 Cook, The best, 451. 
 
 Caravan, 67, 68. 
 
 The Chief's, 52. 
 Cooking men's meals, 449. 
 Copithorne, Mr., 137, 138. 
 Cormorants, 399. 
 Corn, Green, 36. 
 Corpse, Embracing a, 13. 
 Countenance and face, 478. 
 Counting apples, 354. 
 Court etiquette, 249. 
 Covenant of silence, 449. 
 Cranes, 399. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Crawford, Mrs., 99, 415, 416, 456, 459. 
 
 Creation's groan, 264. 
 
 Creator of Human Race, 269. 
 
 "Creator, The," 48. 
 
 Crickets, 54. 
 
 Crime at the Fort, 44. 
 
 Crimea cap-guns, 268. 
 
 Crocodiles, 83, 459. 
 
 and elephant, 433, 434. 
 
 in Hood, 324. 
 
 killed by women, 434. 
 
 kills man, 274. 
 
 Largest, 435. 
 Cromwell's first standing army, 225. 
 Crooked negroes, 113, 441. 
 
 trees, 151. 
 Cropped ears, 291. 
 Crossing the bog, 136. 
 
 the desert, 155 ff. 
 
 the Kwanza, 75, 94. 
 
 The Lualaba, 101, 236. 
 
 the Lufukwe, 394. 
 
 the Lufupa, 163, 164. 
 
 the Lukoleshe, 163. 
 
 the Lulua, 164. 
 
 the Lutikina, 163. 
 
 Lake Mweru, 365, 398-405, 412. 
 
 rivers, 124, 394. 
 Crucifix, Natives wearing, 412. 
 Cumming, Gordon, 383. 
 Cunningham, Mr. and Mrs., 138. 
 Curios, 121. 
 Curlews, 399. 
 Currie, Mr., 37, 50, 204. 
 "Cursing," The, 421. 
 Customs, Luban, 449, 450. 
 Cutting teeth, 236, 237, 238. 
 Cynthia, 140. 
 Czar, The, 178. 
 
 Dahomey men, 326. 
 
 Damages, Death and burial, 132-136. 
 
 Dances, 54, 55, 120, 121. 
 
 Dancing before the Lord, 55. 
 
 man, 17. 
 Darter, 371, 399. 
 Darwin, 274, 275. 
 David's fear, 257- 
 "Death dealer," The, 243. 
 
 ditty, 194. 
 
 of Mushidi, 307-309, 319, 347. 
 
 Notifying, 134. 
 
 Queen Matayu's, 295, 296. 
 
 sleep, The, 456, 457. 
 
 of Smish, 321. 
 
 Sure as, 79. 
 Debased Africans, 144, 442. 
 Debts, Paying, 132. 
 Deifying the Missionary, 101-103. 
 Delcommune arrives, 303. 
 
 Dentistry, 457, 458. 
 " Dentition deaths," 236, 237. 
 Desert of Kifumadzi, 155 ff. 
 Devil, The, 476. 
 
 doctors, 180, 264 ff. 
 Dew, 18, 19, 378. 
 Dhanis, Baron, 330, 331. 
 
 Louis, 330. 
 Dickens, 31, 188. 
 Digging, 71. 
 
 for water, 156, 157. 
 Dilolo, Lake, 396. 
 Dilunga's child, 30. 
 Dining with Mushidi, 169. 
 "Dirt-cheap," 440. 
 Discovery of murder, 82, 83, 
 Doctor, The native, 17. 
 Dog, Debate about a, 272-274. 
 
 Eating his, 244. 
 
 as food, 52, 95. 
 
 Hunting, 348. 
 Doorway of huts, 59, 60. 
 Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan (quoted), 130. 
 " Dramatic neatness of God's methods," 
 
 154, 215, 309. 
 Dream embassy. A, 57, 58. 
 
 of Mushidi, 196, 230, 301. 
 
 An unfulfilled, 58, 59. 
 Dreams, 56, 57, 230. 
 Drinking first, 71. 
 Drink-sodden slavers, 41, 42. 
 Drought, The long, 248. 
 Drowned at river crossing, 42. 
 Druids, The, 440, 
 Drums, native, 121, 222, 224, 424, 439, 
 
 cracked, 475. 
 Duck-shooting, 441. 
 Ducks mean marsh, 124, 
 
 Tree, 399. 
 Dug-outs, 75, 395, 421, 426, 427, 464. 
 Duvivier killed by hippo, 462. 
 Dwelling in unity, 74, 211. 
 Dysentery case, 181. 
 
 Eagles raiding chickens, 116. 
 Earthenware for Mushidi, 186. 
 East Coast, 6, 189. 
 Eating alone, 444. 
 
 a dog, 244. 
 Ebed-melech, 218. 
 Ebenezers, 35, 36, 100. 
 Education, Legal, 133. 
 Eg^'s, 52, 53. 
 Egypt, the door of Africa, 9. 
 
 the fourth plague of, 13, 
 
 Mamelukes of, 50. 
 
 Monuments of, 8, 9. 
 
 Temples of, 386. 
 Ekonga mountains, 34. 
 Elbow, The non-biteable, 167. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Elephants, 348. 
 
 and crocodile, 433, 434. 
 
 Dense cavalcade of, 365, 379. 
 
 dying in Muntenmne, 235, 236. 
 
 fear of leeches, 435, 436. 
 
 hunters, 183, 437-439. 
 
 Indian, 257-259. 
 
 killed by boy, 459, 460. 
 
 provide pumpkins, 380, 381. 
 
 ways, 377, 379. 
 Elonga, Mount, 34. 
 Embodied and ensouled, 444, 445. 
 Emerson, 275. 
 Emperor, Mushidi an, 243. 
 Empty meal-bags, 132, 214, 383. 
 Enfant terriUe, Africa's, 19. 
 " England on same scale," 94. 
 English flag, 301. See Union Jack. 
 
 game laws, 353. 
 Englisliman hoists Congo flag, 303. 
 Englishmen in Africa, 406, 407. 
 Entering the bandits' stronghold, 291. 
 Entry on elephants, 258. 
 Epictetus a slave, 50. 
 Escaping from snake, 252. 
 Ethiopian, Ebed-melech the, 218. 
 Etiquette, Court, 249. 
 Euphorbias, 386. 
 Europeans and Arabs, 200, 201, 202. 
 
 excited over Katanga, 299, 300. 
 
 laws, 143. 
 
 ways, Aping, 186. 
 Exaggerated reports, 328. 
 Executioner, An, 320, 455. 
 Executions of women, 229. 
 Experience the only teacher, 393. 
 Expostulating in vain, 150. 
 Expounding a dream, 56. 
 Ex-slaves, 49. 
 Eye-glasses, 249. 
 
 Eyes, Negroes', 4 ,67, 100, 210, 250-253, 
 387, 473. 
 
 Faggot-seekers in desert, 158. 
 
 False te.'th, 438. 
 
 Falstaff", 119. 
 
 Famine, 214, 310 ff". 
 
 Faraday, 14, 253. 
 
 Far- Interior caravan. A, 65. 
 
 Farrar, Dean, 279-281. 
 
 Fascinated snakes, 314. 
 
 Fatalism, 476. 
 
 Faulknor, Mr., 209. 
 
 Fay, Mr., 37. 
 
 Fees, Demanding, 180. 
 
 paid in slaves, 192. 
 Feigning death, 338, 339. 
 Female goats' horns, 232. 
 Ferryman, A, 35, 70. 
 Fever, 137, 138, 211, 214, 377. 
 
 Ficus Indica, 393. 
 
 Fight with hippos, 464, 465. 
 
 with lions, 105, 366, 368-370. 
 Finding hidden hamlets, 352, 438. 
 Finger, Pointing with the, 86, 87. 
 Fire-flies, 13. 
 Fire on the hearth, 169. 
 
 and water, 159. 
 Fires, Forest and grass, 98, 159, 248. 
 First to cross the forest, 375. 
 
 sight of Mweru, 359. 
 
 stage to Bihe, 31. 
 
 voyage across Mweru, 365. 
 Fish, 413. 
 
 taboo, 168, 477. 
 
 Poisoned, 88, 89. 
 Fisher, Dr. and Mrs., 138, 163. 
 Fisher chief. A, 244. 
 Fishermen on Mweru, 421, 427, 459, 
 
 464. 
 Fishing kraal, 396, 485. 
 
 weir, 434. 
 Five days' siege. A, 163. 
 
 hundred wives, 169, 229, 2-32. 
 
 times sold, 221. 
 Flag of Belgium, 301. 
 
 of Congo State, 303, 306. 
 
 of England. See Union Jack. 
 
 of Portugal, 74, 75. 
 Flags as receipts, 177. 
 Flamingo, 399. 
 
 Flats, The Lufira, 163, 344, 351, 354. 
 Flies, 13. 
 Flies, Blue-bottle, 229, 292, 
 
 Sleeping sickness, 248. 
 
 Tsetse, 248, 371, 381. 
 Floating islets, 461. 
 Flood, 322, 324. 
 Flowers, The home, 416. 
 Folkestone and Calais, 414. 
 Follow your leader, 17. 
 Fonseca, Maria de, 184, 185, 190, 191, 
 
 295. 
 Food in famine, 312 ff. 
 
 in time of need, 217. 
 Footprints, Mushidi's, 270. 
 Forests, Crossing the, 375 ff. 
 
 God s larder, 353, 379. 
 Forsaking an infant, 138. 
 Fort, Arab — Kilwa Island, 404. 
 
 Belgian — Mweru, 404. 
 
 reached, British, 406. 
 
 Crime at the, 44. 
 
 Injustice at the, 43, 47. 
 " Four-eyes, Mr." 249. 
 Fowls, IKi, 397, 413. 
 Fox, Sir Douglas, 111. 
 Francis Drake, 421. 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 250. 
 Friday, Man, 67, 378, 
 
 ! 
 
INDEX 
 
 Friendship, 181. 
 Frogs, 485. 
 
 Frontage, Six miles of, 445. 
 Funeral bills, 134, 135. 
 Chiefs', 285 tf., 453-455. 
 
 Gambling for the seamless robe, 271. 
 
 for a slave, 271. 
 Game laws, 353. 
 
 leg, A, 454. 
 Gammon, Mr., 415. 
 Garenganze, The, 269. 
 
 at last, 164. 
 
 Church, The, 455. 
 
 Eastern edge of, 412. 
 
 England to, 111, 117, 118. 
 
 hills, 164. 
 
 Missionary's influence in, 37, 38. 
 Gas-pipe guns, 185. 
 General Booth (quoted), 92. 
 
 Gordon, 166, 195, 328, 329, 
 
 A negro, 222, 223. 
 Generals, Mushidi's 296. 
 Genesis and Romans, 310. 
 "Gentiles," 94. 
 George, Mr., 319, 415. 
 Gestures of monkeys and negroes, 86. 
 Gibbon, 47, 298. 
 Gifts in time of famine, 217. 
 Girl weeping in the night, 452. 
 Globe trotters, 56. 
 Gnats, 13. 
 Gnu, 162. 
 Goats, 232, 336. 
 
 Gordon, General, 166, 195, 328, 329. 
 God, "An Englishman," 215. 
 
 too busv to care, 263. 
 
 the great King, 424, 425. 
 
 The knowledge of, 277, 423 ff. 
 
 pretensions, Mushidi's, 240, 269. 
 *'God-ites," 76. 
 God-titles, 425. 
 Goose, A spur-wing, 399. 
 Gongo-Lutete, 331. 
 Gospel, Acceptance of the, 413. 
 
 for Africa, 113. 
 
 Despising the, 180, 231. 
 
 an innovation, 4. 
 
 in Garanganze, 473 ff. 
 
 Only one, 342. 
 
 Preaching the, 364, 395, 397. 
 to cannibals, 341, 342, 424, 425. 
 to old chief, 75. 
 to dreamer, 59. 
 to old people, 77. 
 
 too good to be true, 143. 
 
 of Nature, The, 264, 349. 
 Government, Missionaries and the, 
 
 38. 
 Grace before meat, 171. 
 
 Grass fires, 98, 248, 485. 
 
 as food, 312. 
 
 huts, 97, 323, 441, 442. 
 
 The long, 18, 33, 247, 366, 367, 869, 
 375. 
 
 seeds, 367. 
 
 village. Burning of, 441. 
 Grave, Livingstone's, 21. 
 Great Bear, The, 72. 
 
 Lake, The, 348, 395. 
 
 Lakes, 344. 
 
 tribal meeting, 440. 
 Greenock boy. A, 330. 
 
 The gift of, 420. 
 "Groves," Cannibal, 336. 
 Guns, Antiquated, 185, 268, 456. 
 
 Hall of Columns, The, 386. 
 Hamlet, 56. 
 
 Hammer, God's "Word a, 475. 
 Hammocks, 108. 
 Hand-lopping for theft, 196. 
 Hannington, 468. 
 Hankansson, Lieut., 303. 
 Hard questions, 450. 
 
 soil softened, 154, 155. 
 Hare, Augustus, 199. 
 Harpoon men, 426. 
 
 trap for elephants, 460. 
 Haussas, 326, 327, 329. 
 Head of Mushidi, 308. 
 Hearing weakened, 250-253. 
 Heart of the negro, The soft, 37, 195. 
 
 the real culprit, 196, 197. 
 
 versus brain, 355. 
 Heat of Africa, The, 3, 5, 107, 137, 248, 
 
 in the desert, 156. 
 Heaven, 482, 483. 
 Heavenly calling. The, 445. 
 Hell, Arab word for, 203. 
 Henry the Eighth, 172. 
 Herds of elephants, 379, 438. 
 Herodotus, 267. 
 Herons, 399. 
 Hidden trail, 350. 
 
 tribes, 350-352, 438. 
 Higgins, Mr. and Mrs., 319, 416. 
 High Court of Appeal, The, 265. 
 "Hill Difficulty," 36. 
 Hill-men gain footing on Mweru, 244, 
 
 245. 
 Hinde, 333. 
 Hippo-meat, 468-470. 
 Hippo patrol, A, 426. 
 Hippos, Death struggle of, 465. 
 
 Fight with, 464, 465. 
 
 returning to die, 464. 
 
 Schools of, 463. 
 
 Whistling up the, 466, 467. 
 Hoe or bullets, 173. 
 
 3° 
 
INDEX 
 
 Holmes, Dr., 390. 
 
 Home, 29, 220. 
 
 Home flowers, 416. 
 
 Homer, 68. 
 
 Homing aud housing, 446, 447. 
 
 Houey, 413. 
 
 -bird, 382, 383. 
 
 intoxicates badger, 370. 
 Horace, a slave's son, 50. 
 Horn of salvation, A, 422. 
 Horns, Mrs., 336. 
 Hosea, The Book of, 377. 
 House burnt, Missionary's, 11, 41G. 
 
 struck by lightning, 348, 349. 
 Housing question, The, 97, 441-446. 
 Hudson Taylor, 213. 
 Human "brooms," 18. 
 
 hands, The size of, 443. 
 
 hyenas, 337. 
 
 race. The Creator of the, 269. 
 
 sacrifices, 285 ff., 454. 
 Human skin as carpet, 233. 
 
 as water-bottle, 270. 
 Humerus kills croc, 435. 
 " Hungry country," The, 116. 
 Hungry to bed, 88. 
 Hunter-chiefs, 348. 
 
 converted, 437-439. 
 Hunter's dog. A, 272-274. 
 Hunting dogs, 348. 
 Hush-money, 453. 
 Huts, Native, 97, 113, 143, 419, 441, 
 
 442. 
 Hyena, 56, 296. 
 Hymns, Old people singing, 78. 
 Hyphaene palm, 358. 
 
 Ibis religiosa, 399. 
 Idiom, Native, 56. 
 
 "Idiot," The Greek definition of, 240. 
 Ilala, Livingstone's grave at, 21. 
 Ill-treatment of slaves, 46. 
 Immortality of the soul, 272-274, 423. 
 "I'm your Man," 484. 
 Indian elephants, 257-259. 
 
 file, 8, 17. 
 
 Ocean, 343, 405. 
 sighted, 33. 
 Industrial Mission, 205. 
 Infant sorrows, 144. 
 Infection, The spreading of, 439, 441. 
 Influence of wife, 427. 
 Ingeresa, Livingstone's name, 21. 
 Injustice at the Fort, 43, 47. 
 Inkermann, 304. 
 Insanitary villages, 440, 441. 
 Insects — 
 
 Ants, 312, 385, 478. 
 
 Beetles, Dor, 338. 
 
 Caterpillars, 313. 
 
 I N SECTS — continued. 
 Crickets, 54. 
 Flies, 13, 224. 
 
 Blue-bottle, 229, 292, 
 Fire, 13. 
 Gnats, 13. 
 Midges, 14. 
 
 Mosquitoes, 248, 377, 458. 
 Tsetse {Palpalis), 248, 371, 381. 
 Locusts, 312, 315, 429. 
 Moths, 13. 
 Spiders, 338. 
 Instinct, 274, 275, 389. 
 Inver, killed by cannibals, 330. 
 Iron boat from Greenock, 420. 
 Isaiah, 247, 284, 318. 
 Island on Mweru, 405. 
 Kilwa, 246, 398, 461. 
 Islets, Floating, 461. 
 Ivory, 379, 433. 
 
 burned for fuel, 293. 
 claimed, 235, 236, 460. 
 laden caravan, 186. 
 
 Jack, Union, 107, 150, 303, 405. 
 Jackals, 88, 162, 385. 
 Jehannam or hell, 203. 
 Jehu's taunt, 296. 
 Jenneh or Paradise, 203. 
 Jeremiah, 208, 218, 286. 
 Jerome, 432. 
 
 Jezebel, An African, 295, 296. 
 Joab, son of Zeruiah, 294, 295. 
 John's Gospel, 208, 479. 
 Johnson, Dr., 139. 
 Johnstone Falls, 467, 473. 
 Jordan, Miss, 416. 
 Journey begins, The, 33. 
 S- of Mushidi's skull, 309, 310. 
 Julius Csesar, 326. 
 
 "Justification" of a child. The, 238, 
 239. 
 
 "Kaffirs," 95. 
 
 Kalamas, Mushidi's, 230. 
 
 Kalamata, A true, 238. 
 
 Kalamata's town, 423. 
 
 Kalasa, Mushidi's father, 181. 
 
 Kaleba, 467. 
 
 Kalembwe's, 235. 
 
 Kalene Hill, 138, 163. 
 
 Kalunda, 138. 
 
 Kalunga Kameya, 116. 
 
 Kalungwizi, 405. 
 
 Kan, 43. 
 
 Kana rivulet, 349. 
 
 Kangombe, 116. 
 
 Kansanshi, cannibal club, 311. 
 
 Kanyon, The, 34. 
 
 Kapapa, 181, 307. 
 
 8 
 
INDEX 
 
 Kapara's, A lion at, 366. 
 
 Kapwasa, 394, 
 
 Kara ya Rova, The legend o?, 269, 
 
 270. 
 Karema, 259, 
 
 Kasai, The source of the, 131. 
 Kasaruina, 294. 
 Kasanga Valley, 348, 351. 
 Kasansu wrestles with lion, 369, 370. 
 Kasembe's capital, 359. 
 Kasenga, 132, 
 Kaseva, 197. 
 Kashobwe, 433. 
 Kasokota, 201. 
 Kasongo, 477. 
 
 Kasonkomona the ferryman, 35. 
 Katanga, 111, 299, 300, 302. 
 Katigile, 197. 
 Katondo, 338. 
 Katumwa, 43. 
 Kavalo, General, 296. 
 Kavamba, Lake, 319, 334. 
 Kavanga, Gates of the Morning, 344. 
 Kaveke, 12. 
 
 Kavoto, the Lion King, 266, 267. 
 Kavovo quoted, 26. 
 Kavungu, 163. 
 
 Caravans bound for, 12. 
 
 half-way point, 185. 
 
 Revolt of carriers at, 67. 
 Kayumba's, 270. 
 Kazembe, 233, 422. 
 Kazombo, 138. 
 Keating's powder, 98. 
 Keve, Crossing the, 34, 35. 
 Khartoum, 195, 328. 
 Kidd, 405. 
 
 Kifumadzi desert, 28, 155 ff. 
 Killing the Best One, 216. 
 
 the watches, 177. 
 Kilwa, 246, 398, 461. 
 King Fire, 157. 
 
 -fishers, 399. 
 
 The Great, 424. 
 
 of Katanga, 240. 
 
 of Mweru, 235. 
 
 Water, 157. 
 Kings, Native, 116, 117. 
 Kinkondia, Killed at, 303. 
 Kinsman-advocate, 263. 
 Kishinga, 276. 
 Kissale, Lake, 303. 
 Kissing, 450. 
 
 Knives and forks taboo, 170. 
 Knowledge of God, The, 277, 423. 
 Kofwali case, 44. 
 Koni, 319, 473. 
 Koran, The, 174, 202. 
 Kundehingu Range, 112, 344, 350, 354, 
 358, 379. 
 
 Kunehe River, 42. 
 
 Kunje River, 51. 
 
 Kwanza River, 33, 75, 93, 94, 162. 
 
 Lak, The village of, 46. 
 Lake formed, A new, 396. 
 an imaginary, 160, 161. 
 Lakes, The Great, 344. 
 African — 
 
 Bangweulu, 428, 467. 
 
 Dilolo, 396. 
 
 Great White Lake, 395. 
 
 Kavamba, 319, 334. 
 
 Kissale, 303. 
 
 Mary, 395, 396. 
 
 Mnseiigcshi, 395, 
 
 Mweru. See under name. 
 
 Nyassa, or " Maravi," 204, 205, 411. 
 
 Tanganyika. See under name. 
 Lamba at Mushidi's, 192. 
 Lambaite, A, 357. 
 Lamond, Mr. and Mrs., 467. 
 Lamp, No, 250, 251. 
 Lampstand in Tabernacle, 386. 
 Lane, Mr., 74, 75, 213, 320. 
 Language, Speaking the negro's, 347. 
 Largest crocodile, 435. 
 Lust, Mr., 319. 
 Law unto themselves. A, 477. 
 Laws, Dr., 204, 411. 
 Lawsuits, 48, 132, 141-143, 245, 
 about dog, 272-274. 
 Final appeal in, 265. 
 Lecturing in England, 139. 
 Leeches, 435, 436. 
 Legat, 302. 
 
 Legend of Kara ya Rova, The, 269, 270. 
 Le Marinel, Paul, 302. 
 Leojiard on floating island, 461. 
 
 killed by woman, 106. 
 Leopold, King, 300, 460. 
 Leroy killed by cannibals, 330. 
 Letter, Mushidi's, to Sir A. Sharpe, 302, 
 303, 306. 
 Mushidi's, to and from Stairs, 304, 
 305. 
 Lianas, 386. 
 
 Libyan Desert, The, 402. 
 Life like a sheet of paper, 356. 
 "Life-belt Lslaud," 462. 
 Light is sown, 447. 
 Lightening the loads, 68, 69. 
 Lightning conductors, 349. 
 kills herd, 269. 
 shows snake, 251, 252. 
 strikes house, 348, 349. 
 Likuku, 193. 
 Likurwe Hills, 291, 
 Lily-trotters, 399, 
 Lincoln's saying, 350. 
 
INDEX 
 
 LiuiDg out" the villages, 444, 445, 446, 
 Liukiug up East and West, 364, 405. 
 Linseed oil, 447. 
 Lion commits suicide, 358. 
 
 Depot, The, 266, 267. 
 
 eats canoe, 367, 368. 
 
 killed by hoe, 370. 
 by Mbayo, 366. 
 by woman, 105. 
 
 stories, 365 fF. 
 Lioness kills woman, 365. 
 Lions, Famished, 366. 
 
 Cannibals like, 337. 
 Literature, No, 174, 234, 415. 
 Living Epistle, A, 103, 210. 
 
 the Gospel, 474. 
 
 together, 74, 211. 
 
 with Mr. Negro, 51, 56, 445. 
 Livingstone, 18, 21, 257, 410, 42S. 
 
 a consul, 326. 
 
 farewell to Stanley, 166. 
 ■■ Name of, 21. 
 
 song. A, 21. 
 
 The trail of, 405. 
 Livingstonia, 204, 205, 411. 
 Locusts, 429. 
 
 as food, 312, 315, 
 Lofoi, The camp ou the, 326. 
 
 Fort relieved, 330. 
 
 River, The, 322. 
 
 Valley, 319. 
 Lombe, 413. 
 
 London Town, Mushidi dreams of, 301, 
 Long Grass, The. See Grass. 
 Looting caravans, 12, 139, 185, 291. 
 Lost in the savannah, 375 S, 
 
 property, 387. 
 
 villages, 438. 
 Loutitt, Mr., 113. 
 
 Lualaba, 164, 167, 168, 197, 213, 264, 
 328. 
 
 bog, 273. 
 
 crossing. The, 101, 236. 
 
 Hippo in, 426, 465, 
 Luanza, 421, 
 
 Chief flies to, 246. 
 
 Old couple visit, 287, 
 
 River, 360, 
 
 sighted by stork, 402, 
 
 site found, 413. 
 Luapula, The, 112, 196, 859, 375, 461. 
 
 flood, 396. 
 
 Pumpkins brought from, 380, 
 
 Valley, First view of the, 358, 359. 
 Governor of, 364. 
 Kazembe's rule in, 233. 
 Luba country. The, 185, 196, 334, 
 
 485. 
 Lubaland, A dreamer in, 58, 
 Luban cannibals, 337. 
 
 Luban dirge, 145. 
 
 chief (quoted), 26. 
 
 children, 442, 
 
 house, 447. 
 
 ideas of immortality, 272, 
 
 idiom, 194. 
 Luban liking for caterpillars, 313. 
 
 manners, 120. 
 
 saying, 20, 364, 
 
 slaves, 29. 
 
 women, 105, 434, 449. 
 
 words, 9. 
 Lubans, 95, 96, 192, 222, 
 Lubiri bog tribesmen, 126. 
 Luena, The, 131. 
 Lufira, The, 35, 167, 319, 397. 
 
 Flats, The, 344, 351, 354. 
 
 Valley, 181, 231. 
 Mission in, 322. 
 Monkeys in the, 84. 
 Lufukwe, The, 394. 
 Lufupa, Crossing the, 163, 164. 
 Lukauga, 405. 
 
 Lukatula's cannibalism, 334, 335. 
 Lukoleshe, Swimming the, 163. 
 Lukuga, 426. 
 Lulua, Crossing the, 164. 
 Lumba's escape, 333. 
 Lumese, The, 131. 
 Lunda, 192, 232. 
 
 land, 28. 
 
 men, 222. 
 Lunsala Flats, 296, 
 
 The river, 223. 
 Lunungwa, 197, 
 Lupata, Mountains of, 205, 
 Lusambo, 302. 
 Lutala, 236. 
 
 Luther quoted, 110, 325. 
 Lutikina, Fording the, 163, 
 Luvale, 121, 139, 140, 185. 
 
 bandits, 9. 
 
 ladies, 140. 
 
 land, 28, 155, 
 
 lawsuits, 132. 
 
 man, A hunted, 150. 
 
 town turning to God, 
 Lwizi, The, 393, 
 Lying, 78, 174. 
 Lynn, Joseph, 41, 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, 398. 
 Mahanaim, 329. 
 
 Mahomed, Carter's servant, 259. 
 Maitland, Mr., 113. 
 Making tools, 447-449. 
 Malarial mist, 18. 
 mosquito, 248. 
 Malomba, 112. 
 Malingerers' medicine, 180. 
 
 10 
 
INDEX 
 
 "Mamba" snake, 252. 
 Mamelukes, 50. 
 Man-eaters, 330, 331 ff., 423. 
 
 hunting hippo, A, 426. 
 Mangrove swamp, 458. 
 Manning, Cardinal, 325. 
 Map-makers, 267, 410, 428. 
 Map of Africa, 22, 116, 245. 
 
 Not on, 438. 
 
 Old, 155, 205. 
 
 Wiped olF, 441. 
 Map to face p. 164. 
 Marengo Medal, A, 142. 
 Maria de Fonseca. 184, 185, I'^O, 191, 
 
 295. 
 "Married Women's Property Act," 235. 
 Marshes, 14, 124, 248. 
 Martha and Mary, 12. 
 Marvin, E. P., 374. 
 Mary Lake, 395, 396. 
 Masengo lady, 336. 
 Masoudi, Stanley's man, 304. 
 Massacre of the innocents, 236, 237. 
 Master, Choosing a, 48, 49. 
 Matayu, Queen, 295, 296. 
 Matches a boon, 251. 
 Maternity convalescence, 29. 
 May, John, 204. 
 Mbayo kills lion, 366. 
 Mbovola's village, 365. 
 Meal, 99. 
 
 bags. Empty, 132, 214, 383, 
 Meandering to the point, 115. 
 Meaning of names, 428, 429. 
 Measuring tape, The. 445. 
 " Meat hunger," 470'. 
 "Medicine," 4, 173. 
 Medicine by proxy, 179. 
 
 smoked in a pipe, 179. 
 Meeting the Belgians, 305. 
 
 Mr. Cobbe, 101. 
 
 of the two white men, 405. 
 
 place of spirits, 264. 
 Mellen killed, 330. 
 "Memory blend," 70. 
 Menelik's baptisms, King, 242. 
 Mercury fatal to negroes, 180. 
 Methods, God's, 154, 215, 309. 
 Miambo copper mines, Tlie, 164. 
 Midges, 14. 
 
 ]\Iiduight messengers, Mushidi's, 178. 
 Mildmay pr-ayer meeting, 68, 69. ' 
 Military triumph. A, 221, 225. 
 Mill, J.' S., 389. 
 
 Milton's Paradise Lost, 2, 3, 233. 
 Mimosa, 386. 
 
 Minerals found by Lake Dwellers, 245. 
 Mines at Bulawayo, The, 104. 
 Mirage, A, 160, 161. 
 Mirambo, 191, 237. 
 
 Mission baby, The, 416. 
 
 garden, The, 416. 
 
 hut, 209. 
 
 school. The, 446. 
 
 station, 38, 56, 215, 217. 
 
 veneer, 104. 
 Missionary bearings, 203, 204. 
 
 belongings, 215. 
 
 Deifying the, 101-103. 
 
 house burned, 11, 416. 
 
 pays "Nkole," 10, 11. 
 
 protects, 150. 
 
 Watching the, 100. 
 Missionaries in Africa — 
 
 American, 37, 50, 51, 113, 204. 
 
 Anderson, Mr. and Mrs., 467. 
 
 Anton, Mr. and Mrs., 319, 354, 355. 
 
 Arnot, Mr. and Mrs., 74, 209, 415. 
 
 Bs-ffstGr 37 
 
 Bird, Cyriland Mrs., 137, 138, 163. 
 
 Campbell, Mr., 319, 415, 467. 
 
 Clarke, Mr., 319. 
 
 Cobbe, Benjamin, 101, 212, 415. 
 
 Coillard, M., 204. 
 
 Combers, The, 204. 
 
 Copithorne, Mr., 137, 138. 
 
 Crawford, Mrs., 99, 415, 416, 456, 
 459. 
 
 Cunningham, Mr. and Mrs., 138. 
 
 Currie, Mr., 37, 50,204. 
 
 Fay, Mr., 37. 
 
 Faulknor, Mr., 209. 
 
 Fisher, Dr. and Mrs., 138, 163. 
 
 Gammon, Mr., 415. 
 
 George, Mr., 319, 415. 
 
 Hannington, 468. 
 
 Higgins, Mr. and Mrs., 319, 416. 
 
 Jordan, Miss, 416. 
 
 Lamond, Mr. and Mrs., 467. 
 
 Lane, Mr., 74, 75, 213, 320. 
 
 Last, Mr., 319. 
 
 Laws, Dr., 204, 205, 411. 
 
 Livingstone See under name. 
 
 Loutitt, Mr., 113. 
 
 Lynn, Joseph, 41. 
 
 Maitland, 113. 
 
 May, John, 204. 
 
 Morey, Dr., 113. 
 
 O'Jon, Mr. and Mrs., 133. 
 
 Pilkington, 326. 
 
 Pomeroy, Mr., 415, 467. 
 
 Sanders, 37. 
 
 Schindler, Mr., 138. 
 
 Sims, Mr., 467. 
 
 Sparks, Dr., 41. 
 
 Stover, 37. 
 
 Swan, Mr., 43, 44, 209. 
 
 Taylor, Mr. and Mrs., 113. 
 
 Thompson, Mr., 74, 75, 323. 
 
 Wilson, John, 415. 
 
 11 
 
INDEX 
 
 Missionaries in Africa — continued. 
 Woodside, Mr., 33, 37. 
 Zen tier, Mr., 319. 
 Missionaries dwelling together, 74, 212. 
 
 and Government compared, 38. 
 Mitumba Range, The, 302. 
 Mixed negro population, 192. 
 Mohammed, 201, 202. 
 Molenga's, 116. 
 Moloney, Dr., 9, 211, 215, 301, 30.3. 
 
 308, 309. 
 " Monkey curses," 384. 
 Monkeys as food, 85. 
 food, 315, 316. 
 Gestures of, 86. 
 Shooting at, 85. 
 Yellow, 84. 
 Monotony of diet, 413. 
 Monsoon, Breaking of the, 159, 160. 
 Moonlight dances, 54, 55. 
 scene, 433, 434. 
 Travelling by, 36, 381. 
 More, Sir Thomas, 93. 
 Morey, Dr., 113. 
 Mosquitoes, 248, 377, 458. 
 Mother and babe, 29, 124. 
 
 divorced on account of baby's teeth- 
 ing, 237. 
 Grave of, 452. 
 Love of, 221. 
 worshi]), 262. 
 Jloths, 13. 
 Mount Elonga, 34. 
 Moving money, 28. 
 Mpande, 181. 
 Mpweto, 236. 
 Muddy wells, 157, 319. 
 Mud hut, Living in a, 51, 445. 
 Mugavi, 347. 
 Muhemba, 95. 
 Mukanda-vantu, 223. 
 Mulangadi, 393. 
 Miiller, George, 210. 
 Mulonde River, 462. 
 Mulozi's stronghold, 343. 
 Mulungwishi River, 367. 
 Mumoneka, 170, 294. 
 Munabushi, 96. 
 Jlunema, 232, 293, 307. 
 Mungedi's, 370. 
 Muntemune River, 235, 338. 
 Munyamweshi, 32, 96. 
 Alupaka, 96. 
 Murder of baby, 145. 
 
 Discovery of triple, 81-84. 
 Lingering, 115. 
 Wholesale, 331, 335. 
 Murderer of babes, converted, 237. 
 Muruturutu blocks road, 342. 
 Muscngcshi Lake, 395. 
 
 Musenshi, 96. 
 Mush, 99. 
 
 Mushidi, birth of, 168. 
 and blacksmiths, 275, 
 
 Bodyguard of, 307. 
 
 Brother of, 269. 
 
 Capital of, 124, 167, 168. 
 
 Caravans of, 186, 189. 
 
 Chamberlains of, 230. 
 
 dancing, 224, 225. 
 
 Death of, 307, 309, 319, 347. 
 
 despises the missionaries, 211. 
 
 Dreams of, 196, 230, 301. 
 
 Earthenware of, 186. 
 
 an emperor, 243. 
 
 Empire of, half across Africa, 9. 
 the western door into, 164. 
 
 in European dress, 300. 
 
 and eye-glasses, 249. 
 
 Father of, 181. 
 
 Footprints of, 270. 
 
 Generals of, 296. 
 
 and the Gospel, 240-242. 
 
 Governor appointed by, 364. 
 
 and grace before meat, 171. 
 
 "Gun-lie" of, 268, 269. ? 
 
 "God" pretensions of, 240, 269 
 
 Harem of, 229. 
 
 Head of, 308. 
 
 History of, 181. 
 
 and letter to Sir A 
 306. 
 
 and letters to and 
 305. 
 
 nmtters murder, 257. 
 
 offended, 268. 
 
 quoted, 2, 228. 
 
 retires to ]\lunema, 307. 
 
 roars, 193. 
 
 and the skulls, 193. 
 
 Son of, 295. 
 
 spitting, 260. 
 
 Troops of, 294, 
 
 Triumph of, 221-225. 
 
 unable to sleep, 178. 
 
 Wives of, 169, 229, 232. 
 
 Wife of, Kajiapa, 181. 
 
 White wife of, 183, 1.84, 190, 191. 
 
 White slaves of, 9, 215, 309. 
 
 writing, 172, 173. 
 Musician, Tlie native, 17, 18. 
 Musole and her child, 30. 
 Musungu, 387. 
 Mutoni, Lectured by, 249. 
 Muvanga, The fisher chief, 244-246. 
 Mwalumuna, 462. 
 Mwena, 319. 
 Alweru, Belgium sortie to, 326. 
 
 Converts at, 30, 221. 
 
 Crossing, 365, 39S, 405, 412. 
 
 Sharpe, 302, 303, 
 from Stairs, 304, 
 
 12 
 
INDEX 
 
 Mweru, Elephants at, 436. 
 
 Avomen evangelists, 355. 
 
 First view of, 359. 
 
 frontage, six miles, 445. 
 
 Full name of, 396, 428. 
 
 Hill-men at, 244, 245. 
 
 hippos, 462-465. 
 
 King of all, 235. 
 
 Livingstone, song at, 21. 
 trail at, 405. 
 
 Eugarugas on, 32. 
 
 sighted by stork, 402. 
 
 and Tanganyika, 426. 
 Mwonga, 405. 
 
 Nakandundn, 149. 
 Naked feet, 376, 382. 
 
 negroes, 152. 
 
 speech, 152. 
 Nalingombe, 121. 
 Nanga, Consulting the, 82. 
 Nanga, the survivor from cave, 293. 
 Napoleon, 142, 149, 179, 288. 
 Names of Mushidi, 184. 
 
 Long, 396, 428, 429. 
 Naming the hippos, 463. 
 Native carriers, 6. See Carriers. 
 
 children corrupted, 442. 
 
 eyes, 4, 67, 100, 210, 387, 473. 
 
 in the dark, 250-253. 
 
 diet, 99, 100. 
 
 endurance, 378. 
 
 evangelists, 349, 437. 
 
 gestures, 86. 
 
 huts, 97, 113, 143, 419, 441, 442. 
 
 proverb. See Proverbs. 
 
 songs, 21, 29, 151, 219, 220, 341, 422, 
 455. 
 
 travellers, 78. 
 Nature, The book of, 151, 277. 
 
 The gospel of, 349. 
 Ndala, 30. 
 
 Negress, Old, 51, 52. 
 Nero, 224. 
 New names, 22, 23. 
 New Testament, The, 205. 
 Ngoi and Mujikle, 12. 
 Nicholas i. of Eussia, 304. 
 Night alarms, 125. 
 
 dances, 54, 55, 120, 121. 
 
 in the Hood, 322, 323. 
 
 sounds, 251-253. 
 Nile, The, 328, 402, 410. 
 Nineveh sculptures, 315. 
 Nitrogen, 470. 
 Nkole, 9-12, 151. 
 Nkulu, end of capital, 168, 306. 
 Nkuva, 232, 236. 
 Noah, Arab tradition of, 462. 
 Non-biteable elbow, The, 167. 
 
 Nongwe, 245, 246. 
 
 Notifying a wife's death, 134. 
 
 Nseva, 400. 
 
 Ntenke's, Captain Bia's death at, 303. 
 
 Numbering the days, 175. 
 
 Numbers, The Book of (quoted), 40, 48. 
 
 Numeration, African, 278. 
 
 Nwena, 197. 
 
 Nyassa, Lake, 205, 411. 
 
 Nyassaland negroes, 204. 
 
 Nyemba's hippos, 465-467. 
 
 Officers killed by cannibals, 330. 
 
 Ohwa, Senr. Z. of, 42. 
 
 Oil, 447. 
 
 O'Jon, Mr. and Mrs., 138. 
 
 Old folk, 76. 
 
 converted, 77. 
 Olive branch, Bearing an, 361, 362. 
 
 victory. An, 123-127. 
 Omande shell. The, 182, 191, 192, 222. 
 Ombala, 75. 
 Omens, 68. 
 
 One-street villages, 445. 
 Opening up new station, 467-469. 
 "Open sore," The, 28. 
 Operation, A surgical, 456, 457, 459. 
 Origin of Temporal Power of Pope, 325. 
 Orphanage, Miiller's, 210. 
 "Our" Home, not "My" Home, 220. 
 Out-at-elbows missionary. The, 214, 362. 
 
 P. B., Senhor, 47. 
 Paddling canoe, 70. 
 Paiva, Captain, 75. 
 Palm, 3, 358, 386. 
 Pania, 331. 
 
 Paper, Importance of, 172. 
 Papyi-us, 274, 400. 
 
 duck-weed, 461. 
 Parable of black morals, 114. 
 
 Fig tree, 417. 
 
 of the Lake, 398. 
 
 of negi'o ways. 382. 
 Parables, Native, 14, 412, 413. 
 Paradise Lost, 2, 3, 233. 
 Parakeet, 48. 
 Parrot story. A, 104. 
 Partridge, 48, 413, 416. 
 " Path," Bantu meaning of, 8. 
 Path-borer, A, 21, 351. 
 Patriarchal hippo. A, 426. 
 Patrol of hippos, 426. 
 Paul, The Apostle, 13, 100, 104, 203. 
 
 the bondslave, 223. 
 
 The Epistles of, 198. 
 
 "manner of entering in," 213. 
 
 and nature's groan, 264. 
 
 Preaching of, 425. 
 
 at Rome, 140. 
 
 13 
 
INDEX 
 
 Paul, Testimony of, 423, 424. 
 Paying debts, 132, 134. 
 Pea-nuts, 36. 
 Peace instead of war, 126, 127. 
 
 with God, 77. 
 Pecksniff, Mr., 474. 
 Peho, 116. 
 Pelicans, 399. 
 
 Perfume, Flowers without, 417. 
 Petroleum tin, Mushidi's head in, 309. 
 Pharisees, African, 95, 96. 
 Phillips Brooks, 472. 
 Philosopher, The African a, 280. 
 Phragmites, 461. 
 Pick-a-back, 136. 
 Pig, Killing the, 53, 54. 
 Pigmy forest, 402. 
 Pilgrim Town, 51. 
 Pilgrim's Progress, The, 36, 474. 
 Pilkington, 326. 
 Pimbwe, 259, 
 
 Pioneer, The, 18, 20, 21, 67, 415. 
 Pipes taboo, 243. 
 Pith trees, 458. 
 
 Plantations of God, The, 375, 379. 
 Pleading with condemned Arab, 201- 
 
 203. 
 Plovers, Spur-winged, 399. 
 Plutarch, 277. 
 
 "Pneumatic tyres," 376, 382. 
 Pointing with the finger, 86, 87. 
 Points of the compass, 468. 
 Poison ordeal, 80. 
 Poisoned arrows, 268, 352, 353. 
 Poisoned fish, 88, 89. 
 Poisonous foods, 315. 
 Policeman's helmet, A, 120. 
 Polygamy, 201, 231, 287, 449. 
 Pomeroy, Mr., 415, 467. 
 Pope, The power of the, 325. 
 Popelin, 258. 
 
 Population, A mixed, 192. 
 Portuguese advance, 149. 
 
 aliases, 22. 
 
 in Bihe, 41. 
 
 and Boers, 75. 
 
 captives, 12. 
 
 commandant, 44, 149. 
 
 convict's boots, A, 214. 
 
 Fort, The, 43, 44, 47, 150. 
 
 lethargy, 5, 32. 
 
 machila, 108. 
 
 slavers, 27. 
 
 wife, Mushidi's, 184, 185, 190, 191, 
 295. 
 Potato song, The, 412. 
 Poverty and riches, 419. 
 Powder and guns. Refusing to write for, 
 
 268. 
 Praetorian guard, 223. 
 
 Praise getting out at the toes, 55. 
 Praising God misunderstood, 215. 
 Preaching in forest glens, 354. 
 
 to cannibals, 112. 
 
 to chief, 75. 
 
 to Mushidi, 240, 241. 
 
 to soldiers, 327, 330. 
 Precedent, 8, 76, 231. 
 Prepared ways, 377-379. 
 Preservini,' man and beast, 437. 
 Priest murders brother, 80. 
 Prince of Wales, A local, 120. 
 Prisoner in his cell, 266. 
 Propertius, 140. 
 Protestant Popes, 324, 325. 
 Proverbs, 2, 30, 71, 122, 123, 175, 181, 
 
 198, 200, 231, 349. 
 Proxy, Medicine by, 179. 
 Prussia, Storks liberated in, 401. 
 Psalms (quoted), 16, 123, 228, 256, 437, 
 
 484. 
 Pumpkins, 380. 
 Punch, 410. 
 
 Purification after cannibal feast, 336. 
 Pyramids, 9. 
 
 Pyrenees, Africa begins at the, 149. 
 "Python," The, 49. 
 
 Quarantine, 209. 
 Queen Caf^ au lait, 185. 
 
 Matayu, 295. 
 
 Maria de Fonseca. See Portuguese 
 wife. 
 
 Nyakatoro, 135. 
 
 of Sheba, 450. 
 Questions, Asking, 140, 450, 454. 
 Quinine tabloids, 377. 
 
 Rabbit, The, 175. 
 "Rags," 482. 
 Railroads, 111, 163. 
 Rains, 98, 99, 118, 247. 
 Ratel kills African, 370. 
 Rats in flood, 324. 
 
 as food. 312. 
 Reading and writing, 71. 
 Receipts, Records of, 177. 
 Red buck, A herd of, 87, 88, 269. 
 
 sunsets, 285 tf. 
 Redeemed slaves, 219. 
 Redeeming slaves, 30. 
 Refusing to become cannibal, 333, 336. 
 Relief of Fort Lofoi, 330. 
 Returned Missionaries, 139. 
 Revolt, 330, 342. 
 Rhodes, Cecil, 300, 359. 
 Rhodesia, N.W.,150. 
 Rinderpest, 366. 
 River, Following the, 136. 
 
 torrents, 347. 
 
 14 
 
INDEX 
 
 Rivers, African, 247. 
 
 Bailombo, The, 34. 
 
 Congo, The, 2, 3, 23, 163, 204, 402. 
 
 Kana, The, 349. 
 
 Kasai, The, 131. 
 
 Keve, The, 34, 35. 
 
 Kuuehe, The, 42. 
 
 Kunje, The, 51. 
 
 Kwanza, The, 33, 75, 93, 94, 162. 
 
 Lofoi, The, 319, 322, 326, 330. 
 
 Lualaba, The. See under name. 
 
 Luanza, The, 360. 
 
 Luapula, The. See under name, 
 
 Luena, The, 131. 
 
 Luiira, The. See under name. 
 
 Lufukwe, The, 394. 
 
 Lufupa, The, 163, 164. 
 
 Lukoleshe, The, 163, 
 
 Luhia, The, 164. 
 
 Lumese, The, 131. 
 
 Lunsala, The, 223, 296, 
 
 Lutikina, The, 163. 
 
 Mulonde, The, 462. 
 
 Mulungwishi, The, 367. 
 
 Muntemune, The, 235, 338. 
 
 Mupaka, The, 96. 
 
 Nile, The, 328, 402, 410. 
 
 Sankuru, The, 302, 
 
 Zambezi, The, 6, 112. 
 "Road," An African, 7, 17. 
 blocking, 119, 120, 342. 
 buying the, 121, 126, 127. 
 Roaming tribes, 419. 
 Rob Roy chiefs, 9, 116, 119, 120, 127, 
 
 243, 291. 
 Robbers' den. A, 163. 
 Robinson, 305. 
 Roderick Dhu, 122. 
 Roman Catholics, 138, 139, 412. 
 prison, Paul in, 198. 
 soldiers gambling for Christ's robe, 
 
 271. 
 triumph, 221, 
 Romans, The Epistle to the, 13. 
 Rome, The Bishop of, 325. 
 in Paul's day, 140. 
 Slaves in, 50. 
 Rotten rags, A negro's, 218. 
 Rowland Hill's "convert," 104. 
 Rubber root, 132. 
 Riickert, 166, 
 Rum and gin, 41, 42. 
 Runaway slave. A, 45. 
 Rugarugas, 32, 258, 298, 299, 352, 423. 
 Ruskin, 359, 
 
 Sacrifices, Human, 285 ff., 454, 
 Sahara, The, 402. 
 Salimi, 150. 
 Salisbury, Lady, 199. 
 
 Samikilenge, 116. 
 Samusole, 150. 
 San Domingo revolt, 216. 
 San Thome, 29, 75. 
 Sand the finest filter, 156. 
 Sanders, Mr., 37. 
 Sandpipers, 399. 
 Sanga Chief, A, 394. 
 
 civil war, 299. 
 
 Copper King, The, 181. 
 
 Rescued, 182. 
 
 warfare, 310. 
 Sanitation, 440. 
 Sankuru, 193. 
 
 The, 302. 
 Saturday night prayer-meeting, 437. 
 Saxons, 352. 
 Sayings, African, 37, 56, 76, 77, 79, 116, 
 
 276, 277, 384, 385. 
 Schiller, 176. 
 Schindler, Mr., 138. 
 Schools of hippos, 463. 
 
 Mission, 446. 
 Schooner, 420. 
 Scotland, 139, 204, 205. 
 Scott, Clement, 280, 281. 
 Scout-canoes, 398. 
 Scratching the soil, 418. 
 Sea, First sight of the, 33. 
 Seamless robe, The, 271. 
 Seasons, The African, 152. 
 Secret Society, Women's, 232. 
 Seeing farther than we can walk, 398. 
 Sekeseke case, The, 47. 
 Selling the children, 30, 42, 339, 340. 
 Sense of hearing, The negro's, 251-253. 
 Sera man. A, 244. 
 
 plain. The, 286, 453. 
 Seti I., 386. 
 
 "Settled in walking," 20. 
 Shags, 9, 375, 376, 381, 382. 
 Shakespeare, 193, 396. 
 Shaking hands, 362, 363. 
 Sharpe, Sir Alfred, 300, 301, 303, 468. 
 Shawl a clue to murder, 82, 83. 
 Sheba, Queen of, 450. 
 Shedding blood. Without, 245. 
 Sheet of paper, Life like a, 356. 
 Shell, The Omande, 182, 191, 192, 222. 
 Shila folks, 232, 233, 415, 427, 459, 
 464. 
 
 song, 422. 
 Shimba, The Arab leader, 361. 
 
 blocks road, 342. 
 
 The den of, 398. 
 
 the lion, 361, 365. 
 
 The Rugarugas of, 352. 
 
 The vengeance of, 403, 404, 
 Shimpauka and the lioness, 368, 369. 
 Short sermons, 349. 
 
 15 
 
INDEX 
 
 Shut up witli corpse, 133, 134. 
 
 Signing the title-deeds, 414. 
 
 Sikispence, 30, 196, 
 
 Silence at meals, 444. 
 
 Silva Porto of Belmonte, 32, 74. 
 
 Simoom, A, 159, 160. 
 
 Sims, Mr., 467. 
 
 Singing praise, 123. 
 
 when it rains, 98. 
 Sirat, The Bridge of, 202. 
 Sirens, 383. 
 Sixth sense. A, 388. 
 Skin carpet, A human, 233. 
 
 the seamless robe, 271. 
 
 water-bottle, 270. 
 Skull of Mushidi, 309, 310. 
 Skulls, 193, 229, 260, 261, 309. 
 Sky, The African, 36, 99, 153. 
 Slave caravans, 28, 29, 163. 
 
 children, 29, 219. 
 
 degradation, 195. 
 
 girl clubbed, 30. 
 
 mortality, 31. 
 
 redeemed, 219. 
 Slavers, Portuguese, 149. 
 Slaver's widow sells slaves, 31. 
 Slavery, 201, 342. 
 
 in Benguella, 27, 29, 30. 
 
 its effect on Portuguese, 5. 
 
 Inter-negro, 48, 49. 
 Slaves, Price paid for, 30. 
 
 in Rome, 50. 
 
 Trick for gaining, 45, 46. 
 Sleeping in grass huts, 97. 
 
 on the shore, 412. 
 
 sickness, 248, 300, 441, 474. 
 
 in tents, 97, 98. 
 
 under tree, 377. 
 "Slough of Despond," 36. 
 Small-pox, 441. 
 Smish, 320, 455, 456. 
 Smiths, Negro, 23, 448, 449. 
 Smoking medicine, 179. 
 
 taboo, 243. 
 Snails as food, 52, 95, 312. 
 Snake in hut, 252. 
 Snakes as food, 52, 313, 385. 
 
 swimming, 324. 
 Sneeze greetings, 178. 
 
 Mushidi's, 177, 178. 
 Smiff taboo, 243. 
 "8nufl"-maker,"The, 58. 
 "Softies," 76, 123, 140, 141. 
 Soil softened. Hard, 154. 
 Sold for drink, 42. 
 Soldiers' wives, war-dance of, 329. 
 Solomon, 432. 
 Song, Cannibals', 337, 339, 341. 
 
 of deliverance, 422, 423. 
 
 Native, 21, 194, 412, 455. 
 
 Song of wild woman, 385. 
 
 Songa, 265. 
 
 Sorghum plantations, 393. 
 
 Soul, The immortality of the, 272-274. 
 
 "Sourcingit," 131. 
 
 South, Bishop, 144. 
 
 Sowing in tears, 137. 
 
 Spanish proverb, 228. 
 
 Sparks, Dr., 41. 
 
 Speaking the language, 347. 
 
 Sjieech, Naked, 152. 
 
 Spiders, 338. 
 
 Spirit 1 Has a dog a, 272-274. 
 
 To, 481. 
 
 worship, 260-266. 
 Spitting, Laws against, 143. 
 
 Mushidi, 260. 
 Squeal, The pig's, 54, 
 St. Paul de Loanda, Governor of, 183, 
 
 184. 
 Stairs, Captain, 9, 301, 303-307, 311, 
 
 arrives, 305, 
 
 Death of, 304, 
 
 intercepts Mushidi's letter, 303, 306. 
 " Stand and deliver," 119. 
 Stanley, 246, 258. 
 
 Cannibals who attacked, 111. 
 
 Livingstone's farewell to, 166. 
 Stanley's column. Leader of, 303. 
 
 man, Masoudi, 304. 
 
 tribute to Stairs, 304. 
 Starry night, 36. 
 Starving lion killed, 366. 
 Station, The Mission, 38, 56, 104, 215, 
 
 217, 418. 
 Still-born child. A, 235. 
 Stokes, 258. 
 
 Stooping, The necessity of, 59, 60. 
 Storks migrating, 400-402. 
 Stover, Mr., 37. 
 Strangers and pilgrims, 419. 
 Strangling a lioness, 369. 
 Suffragettes, Negro, 232. 
 Suicide of incendiar}', 11. 
 
 of lion, 438. 
 
 of Silva Porto, 74. 
 Suit of clothes, A well-fitting, 214. 
 Sultan of Zanzibar, 199. 
 Summer and winter, 72. 
 Sun, The African, 152, 156, 160, 248. 
 Sunrise, 36, 56. 
 
 on Kundelungu Range, 351. 
 " Sun's little Sonny," 14. 
 Suppers, Indigestible, 36. 
 Surety for a stranger, 11. 
 Surgical operation, 456, 459. 
 Swahili, 95, 96, 112. 
 Swallow darting South, 275. 
 Swan, Mr., 44, 209. 
 
 I'he Slavery (if To- Dan, ^3. 
 
 16 
 
INDEX 
 
 Swimming the Lufukwo, 394. 
 
 the Lukoleshe, 163. 
 Swiva, Chief, 337-340. 
 Sycamore dium, The, 424, 439. 
 Sychar's well, Christ at, 263. 
 
 Tabernacle, The, 386. 
 
 Taboo, 168, 170, 243, 427, 428, 477. 
 
 Tacitus, 188, 222. 
 
 Talashio, 170. 
 
 Talking the sun up, 406. 
 
 Tanganyika, 328, 402, 410, 411, 426. 
 
 Plateau, The, 104, 204. 
 Tangled Isle, 405. 
 Tantalising, 167. 
 Taylor, Mr. and Mrs., 113. 
 
 Hudson, 213. 
 Te Deum, 422. 
 Tea, 69, 70, 217. 
 Teeth, False, 458. 
 Teething, 236, 237, 238, 239. 
 Temperaments, Various, 212. 
 Ten years after, 154, 155. 
 Tenda, 131. 
 Tennyson, 264, 472. 
 Tents, Sleeping in, 97, 98. 
 Tete, General, 296. 
 Thermometer, Healing virtues of, 179, 
 
 180. 
 Thief converted, 475, 
 "Think snake, sight snake," 252. 
 "Thinking Black," 8, 12, 14, 70, 114, 
 
 115, 151, 152, 167, 196,278,281, 
 
 388, 398. 
 Thirty knots for converts, 354. 
 Tiiirty-two months' journey, 111. 
 Thompson, Mr., 74, 75, 323. 
 Thousand miles to bank or shop, 214, 
 
 217, 219. 
 Thunderstorm, 251, 252. 
 Timidity of boa-constrictors, 314. 
 Tinned provisions, 99. 
 "Tin-Swallower,"Mr., 316. 
 "Tithing the corn," Monkeys, 84. 
 Title-deeds of Luanza, Signing the, 413, 
 
 414. 
 Toads, 54. 
 
 Tobacco, the death-dealer, 243. 
 To-morroiv's news, 56, 57. 
 "Too late," 76, 386. 
 Tools, Native, 447-449. 
 Toothache, 457, 458. 
 Topsey-turvey Africa, 70 tf. 
 Toucan feathers, 125. 
 " Tower guns," Mushidi's, 294, 307. 
 Town wiped out, 290-294. 
 Trail, The narrow, 6, 7, 8, 9, 18, 19, 69, 
 
 114, 375, 376, 381. 
 Buying the, 126, 127. 
 Hiding the, 350. 
 
 Trail, Keeping open the, 122. 
 
 Livingstone's, 405. 
 
 "Shags" on the, 9, 375, 376, 382. 
 Translation of New Testament, 205. 
 Travellers, Native, 78. 
 Travelling, mode of, 107, 108. 
 Tree, A crooked, 151. 
 
 of witness. The, 414. 
 Trees, Giant, 386. 
 Trees, Afkican — 
 
 Acacias, 386, 393, 402. 
 
 Banana, 323. 
 
 Calabash, 388. 
 
 Euphorbia, 386. 
 
 Fig, 121, 417. 
 Ficus Indica, 393. 
 
 Lianas, 386. 
 
 Mimosa, 386. 
 
 Talm, 3. 
 
 Borassus, 386. 
 Hypliccne, 358. 
 
 Pith, 458. 
 
 Sycamore, 388. 
 Trials, Missionary, 211. 
 Tribute, 118, 119, 122. 
 Triumph, A military, 221-225. 
 Troglodytes, The last of the, 291-293. 
 Trunk, The elephant's, 435, 436. 
 "Truss of Calico," 30. 
 Truth, 80, 81. 
 Tsetse fly, 248, 371, 381. 
 Tubal Cain's followers, 275, 276, 448. 
 Tunis, Stork killed at, 401. 
 Turner, 359. 
 
 Twigs and branches, 442, 443. 
 Twins, 72, 73. 
 Twisted speech and manners, 115. 
 
 Ulysses, 383. 
 
 Umbundu polish, 47. 
 
 "Undertakers," The, 435. 
 
 Uniform, A mixed, 120. 
 
 Union Jack, Tlie, 107, 150, 303, 405. 
 
 Unyanyembe, 32. 
 
 Ushi, 191, 192. 
 
 Utopia, 93. 
 
 Vachokwe tribe. The, 75. 
 
 Vahemba, 95. 
 
 Valomotwa, 350, 351. 
 
 Van den Huvel, 258. 
 
 Va Sanga, 183, 311. 
 
 Vastness of Africa, map facing p. 164. 
 
 Vegetation, Forest, 386. 
 
 Vemba, 192, 196, 219. 
 
 Verdickt, 302, 326, 404. 
 
 Via Dolorosa to Chiefs tomb, 289. 
 
 Villages, Native, 113, 143, 144, 485. 
 
 Lost, 438. 
 " Visese," Senhor, 12. 
 
 17 
 
INDEX 
 
 Voltaire, 180. 
 Vultures, 116, 162. 
 
 Wagogo tricks, 139, 185. 
 "Wake," 134, 135. 
 Walepa, 459. 
 
 Wales, Britons hiding in, 352. 
 Walk of life symbolised, 115. 
 W^angermee, Governor, 330, 338. 
 "VVanyamwezi Hills, 198. 
 War averted, 125, 126. 
 
 between Arabs and Africans, 361. 
 
 brewing at Bilie, 74. 
 Wasenshi, 96. 
 Watches and clocks, 176. 
 Watching the corn, 311. 
 Water, bad, 157, 168, 439, 485. 
 
 digging for, 156, 157. 
 
 -bottle of human skin, 270. 
 
 -fowl, 399. 
 
 -rails, 399. 
 Waterloo flint-locks, 268. 
 Watershed, The, 112. 
 Waylaying caravans, 139. 
 Weather, The, 153. 
 Weeping at mother's grave, 452. 
 Well of Sychar, 263. 
 Wells, Digging, 156, 157. 
 AVesley, John, 383. 
 West Coast, The, 3, 95, 189. 
 
 and East joining hands, 344, 364, 405 
 Western road blocked, 213. 
 
 opened, 126. 
 Wet, Getting, 71, 141. 
 Whistling up the hippos, 466, 467. 
 White ants, 312, 478. 
 
 chalk acquittal, 132, 134. 
 
 lady, The first, 415. 
 
 Lake, The Great, 395. 
 
 man. The first, 395. 
 The only, 169. 
 Parables of, 4. 
 
 men and black, 79, 215, 395. 
 killed by Mushidi, 257, 259. 
 Names in Africa of, 21, 22. 
 
 officers killed, 330. 
 
 slaves, 215, 309. 
 
 wife. The, 183. See Portuguese wife. 
 
 Whitefield, George (quoted), 110. 
 "Whites killed the Christ," 216. 
 " W^ilsou, John," party, 415. 
 Winds on the Lake, 420. 
 "Winking with the eye, 27, 28, 408. 
 Winter and summer, 72. 
 Witch-doctors, 179. 
 Wives of fishermen, 427, 428. 
 "Wolda Gabriel," The, 242. 
 "Wolda Jesus, "The, 242. 
 AVoman and Commandant, 44. 
 
 and leopard, 106. 
 
 kills lion, 105. 
 
 sacrificed. Old, 286, 287. 
 
 Wild, 383-386. 
 Women, African, 348. 
 
 and cannibalism, 336. 
 
 evangelists, 355. 
 
 Questions of, 450. 
 
 Secret Society, 234, 
 Woodpecker reminds of home, 416. 
 Woodside, Mr., 33, 37. 
 Wounded monkeys, 85. 
 Writing, 71, 172, 173. 
 
 Arabic, 201. 
 Written speech, No, 415. 
 
 Xenophon, 33, 178, 222. 
 
 Yeke band. The, 197. 
 Yellow flag of quarantine, The, 209. 
 monkeys, 84. 
 
 Z., Senr., 42, 45. 
 Zambezi, The, 6, 112. 
 
 The source of the, 112. 
 Zanzibar, 95, 303. 
 
 road. The, 139. 
 
 Sultan of, 199. 
 
 A W^estern, 5, 32. 
 Zanzibaris, 259, 304. 
 Zebra Plains, The. 164. 
 Zebras, 164, 231. 
 Zebulun's ]iortion, 156. 
 " Zenobia" class of women, 233. 
 Zentler, Mr., 819. 
 Zeruiah's sons, 295, 
 
 MoRQAN & Scott Lu., LondoaN, Enulanu. 
 
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