In the Heart of Africa - Sir Samuel White Baker (howl and other poems .TXT) 📗

was hidden. Rocks, stones, and lances were hurled at them from all sides and from above. They were forced to retreat. The retreat ended in a panic and precipitate flight. Hemmed in on all sides, amid a shower of lances and stones thrown from the mountain above, the Turks fled pell-mell down the rocky and precipitous ravines. Mistaking their route, they came to a precipice from which there was no retreat. The screaming and yelling savages closed round them. Fighting was useless; the natives, under cover of the numerous detached rocks, offered no mark for an aim, while the crowd of armed savages thrust them forward with wild yells to the very verge of the great precipice about five hundred feet below. Down they fell, hurled to utter destruction by the mass of Latookas pressing onward! A few fought to the last, but one and all were at length forced, by sheer pressure, over the edge of the cliff, and met a just reward for their atrocities.

My men looked utterly cast down, and a feeling of horror pervaded the entire party. No quarter had been given by the Latookas, and upward of two hundred natives who had joined the slave-hunters in the attack had also perished with their allies. Mahommed Her had not himself accompanied his people, both he and Bellaal, my late ringleader, having remained in camp, the latter having, fortunately for him, been disabled, and placed hors de combat by the example I had made during the mutiny.

My men were almost green with awe when I asked them solemnly, "Where are the men who deserted from me?" Without answering a word they brought two of my guns and laid them at my feet. They were covered with clotted blood mixed with sand, which had hardened like cement over the locks and various portions of the barrels. My guns were all marked. As I looked at the numbers upon the stocks, I repeated aloud the names of the owners. "Are they all dead?" I asked. "All dead," the men replied. "FOOD FOR THE VULTURES?" I asked. "None of the bodies can be recovered," faltered my vakeel. "The two guns were brought from the spot by some natives who escaped, and who saw the men fall. They are all killed." "Better for them had they remained with me and done their duty. The hand of God is heavy," I replied. My men slunk away abashed, leaving the gory witnesses of defeat and death upon the ground. I called Saat and ordered him to give the two guns to Richarn to clean.

Not only my own men but the whole of Ibrahim's party were of opinion that I had some mysterious connection with the disaster that had befallen my mutineers. All remembered the bitterness of my prophecy, "The vultures will pick their bones", and this terrible mishap having occurred so immediately afterward took a strong hold upon their superstitious minds. As I passed through the camp the men would quietly exclaim, "Wah Illahi Hawaga!" (My God, Master!) To which I simply replied, "Robine fe!" (There is a God.) From that moment I observed an extraordinary change in the manner of both my people and those of Ibrahim, all of whom now paid us the greatest respect.

One day I sent for Commoro, the Latooka chief, and through my two young interpreters I had a long conversation with him on the customs of his country. I wished if possible to fathom the origin of the extraordinary custom of exhuming the body after burial, as I imagined that in this act some idea might be traced to a belief in the resurrection.

Commoro was, like all his people, extremely tall. Upon entering my tent he took his seat upon the ground, the Latookas not using stools like the other White Nile tribes. I commenced the conversation by complimenting him on the perfection of his wives and daughters in a funeral dance which had lately been held, and on his own agility in the performance, and inquired for whom the ceremony had been performed. He replied that it was for a man who had been recently killed, but no one of great importance, the same ceremony being observed for every person without distinction.

I asked him why those slain in battle were allowed to remain unburied. He said it had always been the custom, but that he could not explain it.

"But," I replied, "why should you disturb the bones of those whom you have already buried, and expose them on the outskirts of the town?"

"It was the custom of our forefathers," he answered, "therefore we continue to observe it."

"Have you no belief in a future existence after death? Is not some idea expressed in the act of exhuming the bones after the flesh is decayed?"

Commoro (loq.).--"Existence AFTER death! How can that be? Can a dead man get out of his grave, unless we dig him out?"

"Do you think man is like a beast, that dies and is ended?"

Commoro.--"Certainly. An ox is stronger than a man, but he dies, and his bones last longer; they are bigger. A man's bones break quickly; he is weak."

"Is not a man superior in sense to an ox? Has he not a mind to direct his actions?"

Commoro--"Some men are not so clever as an ox. Men must sow corn to obtain food, but the ox and wild animals can procure it without sowing."

"Do you not know that there is a spirit within you different from flesh? Do you not dream and wander in thought to distant places in your sleep? Nevertheless your body rests in one spot. How do you account for this?"

Commoro (laughing)--"Well, how do YOU account for it? It is a thing I cannot understand; it occurs to me every night."

"The mind is independent of the body. The actual body can be fettered, but the mind is uncontrollable. The body will die and will become dust or be eaten by vultures; but the spirit will exist forever."

Commoro--"Where will the spirit live?"

"Where does fire live? Cannot you produce a fire*


(* The natives always produce fire by rubbing two sticks
together.)


by rubbing two sticks together? Yet you SEE not the fire in the wood. Has not that fire, that lies harmless and unseen in the sticks, the power to consume the whole country? Which is the stronger, the small stick that first PRODUCES the fire, or the fire itself? So is the spirit the element within the body, as the element of fire exists in the stick, the element being superior to the substance."

Commoro--"Ha! Can you explain what we frequently see at night when lost in the wilderness? I have myself been lost, and wandering in the dark I have seen a distant fire; upon approaching the fire has vanished, and I have been unable to trace the cause, nor could I find the spot."

"Have you no idea of the existence of spirits superior to either man or beast? Have you no fear of evil except from bodily causes?"

Commoro.--"I am afraid of elephants and other animals when in the jungle at night; but of nothing else."

"Then you believe in nothing--neither in a good nor evil spirit! And you believe that when you die it will be the end of body and spirit; that you are like other animals; and that there is no distinction between man and beast; both disappear, and end at death?"

Commoro.--"Of course they do."

"Do you see no difference in good and bad actions?"

Commoro.--"Yes, there are good and bad in men and beasts."

"Do you think that a good man and a bad must share the same fate, and alike die, and end?"

Commoro.--"Yes; what else can they do? How can they help dying? Good and bad all die."

"Their bodies perish, but their spirits remain; the good in happiness, the bad in misery. If you leave no belief in a future state, WHY SHOULD A MAN BE GOOD? Why should he not be bad, if he can prosper by wickedness?"

Commoro.--"Most people are bad; if they are strong they take from the weak. The good people are all weak; they are good because they are not strong enough to be bad."

Some corn had been taken out of a sack for the horses, and a few grains lying scattered on the ground, I tried the beautiful metaphor of St. Paul as an example of a future state. Making a small hole with my finger in the ground, I placed a grain within it: "That," I said, "represents you when you die." Covering it with earth, I continued, "That grain will decay, but from it will rise the plant that will produce a reappearance of the original form."

Commoro.--"Exactly so; that I understand. But the original grain does NOT rise again; it rots like the dead man, and is ended. The fruit produced is not the same grain that we buried, but the PRODUCTION of that grain. So it is with man. I die, and decay, and am ended; but my children grow up like the fruit of the grain. Some men have no children, and some grains perish without fruit; then all are ended."

I was obliged to change the subject of conversation. In this wild naked savage there was not even a superstition upon which to found a religious feeling; there was a belief in matter, and to his understanding everything was MATERIAL. It was extraordinary to find so much clearness of perception combined with such complete obtuseness to anything ideal.


CHAPTER XVII


Disease in the camp--Forward under difficulties--Our cup of misery overflows--A rain-maker in a dilemma--Fever again--Ibrahim's quandary--Firing the prairie.


Sickness now rapidly spread among my animals. Five donkeys died within a few days, and the rest looked poor. Two of my camels died suddenly, having eaten the poison-bush. Within a few days of this disaster my good old hunter and companion of all my former sports in the Base country, Tetel, died. These terrible blows to my expedition were most satisfactory to the Latookas, who ate the donkeys and other animals the moment they died. It was a race between the natives and the vultures as to who should be first to profit by my losses.

Not only were the animals sick, but my wife was laid up with a violent attack of gastric fever, and I was also suffering from daily attacks of ague. The small-pox broke out among the Turks. Several people died, and, to make matters worse, they insisted upon inoculating themselves and all their slaves; thus the whole camp was reeking with this horrible disease.

Fortunately my camp was separate and to windward. I strictly forbade my men to inoculate themselves, and no case of the disease occurred among my people; but it spread throughout the country. Small-pox is a scourge among the tribes of Central Africa, and it occasionally sweeps through the country and decimates the population.

I had a long examination of Wani, the guide and interpreter, respecting the country of Magungo. Loggo, the Bari interpreter, always described Magungo as being on a large river, and I concluded that it must be the Asua; but upon cross-examination I found he used the word "Bahr" (in Arabic signifying river or sea) instead of "Birbe" (lake). This important error being discovered gave a new feature to the geography of this part. According to his description, Magungo was situated on a lake so large that no one knew its limits. Its breadth was such that, if one journeyed two days east and the same distance west, there