African Folk
I
OLD PRESIDENT KRÜGER is reported to have said that the white man who understands a native has not yet been born. C. J. Rhodes used to call the natives ‘those poor children’; but he was not, like Krüger, born and brought up among them, and to him, on his towering height, they were, no doubt, only those poor children. To one who is in incessant contact with them, without being officially a master, they will, although often reminding him of children, appear vastly different in essence. Natives are often childlike, but much oftener childish, in the expression of merriment and in their entertainments; and sometimes they appear to bring into their intercourse with the white man who has gained — or thinks he has gained — their confidence the trustfulness of children. But these are about all the points of resemblance between the two.
There are, however, a great many points of resemblance between natives and Europeans, irrespective of age; and these are the more striking by contrast with the many points of difference, But it is in the character of the native himself that the greatest contrasts occur. As regards taste, for instance: one and the same individual will on one occasion show remarkable artistic instinct, and on another he will exhibit the greatest delight in things which, to a white man, appear both inartistic and ugly. In many tribes men and women are fond of decorating their heads with flowers, and in doing so show a just appreciation of the effects of form and color. And yet the very men and women who display exquisite judgment when they adorn themselves with the means which Nature has put at their disposal, forfeit all their artistic sense the moment they come in touch with European wearing apparel, and walk about, objects of abject ridicule, with flayed tropical helmets, in torn coats and trousers either three times too large or three times too small for their size. I once tore off the worn black-cloth cover of my diary. When my cook appeared before me on the following morning, he was wearing it round his neck as an ornament.
Years ago, when I was living in Taveta, in British East Africa, Malikanoi, one of the two paramount chiefs of the Wataveta, wore a shock of unusually long, unkempt hair. He was supposed to be a magician, and his subjects believed that his occult powers, like those of Samson as an athlete, lay in his hair. As he dressed, besides, in nondescript old discolored European garments, his appearance could not be called either prepossessing or dignified. As the time came near when his son — a splendid lad, who, at the age of sixteen, had killed a lion single-handed with his spear — was to come of age, Malikanoi announced that, in honor of the occasion, he would shave off his hair.
I was invited to the festivities as a guest; and, in consequence, on the day appointed, I repaired to the Taveta forest, where the dances took place. There, sitting on an old deck-chair, I found the chief; and my surprise was as great as must have been, in Mr. Locke’s novel, that of Ephraim’s guests, when Clementina Wing made her appearance in a hundred-guinea gown and diamonds. His head and face were clean-shaven, and I noticed for the first time the Cæsarean outline of his clear-cut profile. He was wrapped in the ample folds of a toga, dyed the color of amethyst, and he had wound round his bald head a single string of glass beads of the same color as the toga. He presented a perfect picture, and I said to myself that the mere imagining of such a combination as the toga and the glass beads of one and the same color indicated profound artistic feeling. Yet for years that man had walked about looking like a buffoon.
II
Another field where the contradictions in a negro’s æsthetic notions are very apparent is that of the dances. Some are very beautiful, and others very ugly; yet the performers themselves do not appear to see any difference. The Wakinga of the Livingstone Range, for instance, have a dance with solos which might have been, and perhaps — who knows? — was performed before the shrine of some Greek deity in the days of Pericles. Nothing more beautiful, from a choregraphic point of view, could be imagined. And yet these same people have another dance — I regret to say it is the more popular of the two — which, so far as ugliness goes, baffles description. After a time, I forbade it in my camp, where small groups were frequently performing it. My wish was respected, but, as a punishment, I suppose, for my want of taste, the other, the beautiful dance, was never again executed in my presence, although I repeatedly asked for it.
It is the same with their songs. Many natives, as is well known, have splendid voices, mostly baritone and tenor, rarely bass. Some of their choruses are a pleasure to listen to. But they will, in the midst of their songs, no matter whether they are performing singly or with others, often change, all of a sudden, into an ear-rending falsetto, without apparently feeling conscious of any difference. They call it ‘singing with the small voice,’ and protests are received with surprise.
Nowhere, however, is the inconsequential behavior of the native more glaring than where his cleanliness is concerned. Except in the waterless plains, and where they are in the habit of coating themselves with oil and red ochre, — the one, generally, coincides with the other, — most natives are extremely fond of bathing. This is especially the case in hilly countries traversed by many streams. They do not appear to mind the cold in the least, and often bathe in midwinter before sunrise. Certain tribes, like that of the Wayao of Nyasaland, might be said to be fanatically fond of bathing. They bathe three and four times a day, and their bath is as great a necessity to them as food or drink.
A curious consequence of this admirable quality has been, on several occasions, the complete failure of attempts on my part to cure people of skin diseases or ulcers. Patients with diseases which necessitated the keeping on of an ointment for several consecutive days would persist in bathing at least once a day, heedless of the fact that they were getting rid, in the process, of all the stuff which was to bring them health or relief; while others could not be prevented from taking off, while bathing, bandages which had been carefully swathed round their limbs an hour or two before. And yet the garments of these very people — some of whom will rather suffer disease than go, for a short period, without their daily bath — very often, particularly when they have adopted European garb, teem with lice, as their huts swarm with bugs and, too often, also, with the dangerous recurrent fever-ticks.
Besides being, to all appearance, quite indifferent to vermin, they lack the most rudimentary notions of hygiene and sanitation, even in countries long inhabited by white men, and do not seem to feel the slightest disgust when they come into contact with those nameless things which fill every European with horror. In this respect they are simply exasperating: to treat people with ulcers, a duty which, now and then, falls to the lot of every traveler in Tropical Africa, is a most thankless task. They will drop the soiled cotton-wool just detached from their sores anywhere near, and put their hands or their feet in it with the greatest unconcern. Once I actually found a man, a Ngoni, washing his soiled bandage in his cooking-pot, with the stream running past not a hundred yards away.
The mention of this incident reminds me of a native peculiarity against which every traveler and every settler in Tropical Africa has been fighting from time immemorial, and will probably go on fighting until the end of time. No matter how near to the camping-place or to the house the stream passes, the servants will never carry the cups, pots, and plates to it, in order to wash them in the running water: they will, instead, carry a bucket with water to the kitchen or to the cooking-place, and heve wash everything in the same water.
The single inland tribe of my acquaintance that forms an exception to this general rule of indifference to the cleanliness of their surroundings is the Wasokiri to the north of Lake Nyasa. They might have been to school in Holland.
It is often mentioned, as a proof of the native’s tacit admission of the white man’s superiority, that he will always, when he has the choice, come to the latter for cure of disease, in preference to his own doctors. But his ineradicable objection to hospitals, where such exist, does not support this opinion. It is a curious fact that many natives share with a considerable number of the poor classes among white people the idea that, in hospital, they are being experimented upon; while others are convinced that a stay in the hospital inevitably means the loss of a limb. I have known many cases of natives who, rather than agree to being taken into hospital, would resign themselves to the prospect of endless suffering or death; and many more where the patients, after being told that they would be sent to the hospital, simply vanished.
On closer examination, this apparent preference of the native for European remedies, where their use does not imply a visit to the hospital, reduces itself, like most native questions, to one of pounds, shillings, and pence. Europeans generally charge nothing at all, or only nominally, for their assistance, while native doctors are very expensive, comparatively speaking. The fees vary from three to fifteen shillings and more; or, where coin is not yet in general use, the equivalent in goods. In Nyasaland the fee for curing an ulcer is three shillings; for relieving an impaired digestion, six; for more dangerous diseases, fifteen. This fee is never paid in advance, and — a detail which might be recommended for adoption in civilized communities — only when the cure has been a total success. When natives are asked what would happen if they did not pay up after being cured, they declare that the cured patient would immediately fall ill again, and, if he persisted in his refusal, die.
Many writers on African affairs, and the majority of settlers, are of opinion that the marked changes that appear in the genernl behavior of male African negroes when they first start courting are of a pathological nature; and for many years I shared this view. But of late I have come to ask myself whether these changes are not simply the effect of various drugs, to the use of which, at that particular period of their existence, natives are much addicted, and of which they partake with that absence of moderation which characterizes them whenever it is a question of gratifying the senses.
Several of these elixirs are in use in that country; the one reputed to have the most effect is made by boiling the inner bark of a tree which is conspicuous, where it occurs, by the dark color of its small leaves, in contrast with the lighter green of the Myombo forest in general.
I have had occasion to observe the effects of this drug, almost day by day, on a young fellow in my service, a Yao, who had resolved to marry, native fashion, a pretty young widow, who was somewhat older than he. Arvad would, of course, never have told me that he was drugging himself, but he was betrayed to me by the man who was providing him with the stuff. The effects of the drug on the lad were remarkable indeed. For several days he appeared to be in a kind of waking trance, like Mrs. Gamp, walking about with a stiff, extended neck, a fixed stare, and uttering a kind of sotto-voce recitativo. This state was interrupted from time to time by intermezzos of buoyant gayety! After about a week, he completely lost his memory: when I sent him to deliver a message, he sat down in front of the house; and, when I followed him there about, half an hour later, he had delivered no message, totally unconscious of the fact that the person to whom the message was sent sat not five yards away from him. He had forgotten all about it. Shortly afterward we parted company, by mutual consent.
III
The native pharmacopœia, though mixed with superstitious practices, comprises many efficacious remedies for all kinds of diseases; and when the time comes for it to be investigated thoroughly and extensively, it will probably add some invaluable and quite unforeseen data to our own store of medical knowledge. Native doctors are notoriously reticent. For years, in German East Africa, Europeans have tried in vain to find out the cure of the Wahehe tribe against syphilis — a cure which, at least as far as all outward symptoms are concerned, is wonderfully effective. Doubtless there exist, among native tribes, secret medicines about which we know nothing at all. Occasionally, and by chance, one hears hints which give much food for speculation.
One striking instance may be mentioned. Speaking about the spirillum fever-tick, the authors of The Great Plateau of Northern Rhodesia say: ‘ An interesting point — though, unfortunately, one that cannot be vouched for—is that some of the Angoni have, by repeated attacks in generation after generation, become immune. To preserve this immunity when traveling, and with the idea of imparting immunity to their friends, they are said to carry these home-bred ticks with them, from place to placed. This statement, to which the writers themselves do not appear to give too much credit, apart from sounding fantastic, is also, so far as the tame tick’s action is concerned, rather obscure. But the fact of domesticated ticks being taken along like household pets by people going on a journey finds an interesting confirmation, unknown, I think, to the authors just quoted, in a book which was written in the Reign of Queen Anne, the Journal of Robert Drury, the Madagascar slave, attributed by some to Defoe. He tells exactly the same story about one of the Madagascar tribes and their ticks or bugs, which must have been the identical spirillum ticks.
The expression ‘cowardly native’ is a household word among Europeans in Africa, and yet, instances of courageous actions of natives, such as, to my knowledge, no white man ever performed, are innumerable. The reason for this entirely unmerited reputation probably lies in the fact that, as a rule, they are not in the least ashamed to admit that they are, or that they have been, afraid, while a white man, unless he is a recognized hero, will die rather than make such an avowal. Another reason, no doubt, lies in their many idiosyncrasies and the superstitious awe with which perfectly harmless things inspire them. Almost all the natives, for instance, from the Indian Ocean to the lakes, fear chameleons much more than they fear snakes.
It is very common to hear travelers complain about the cowardice of native followers, who, when the caravan was charged by a rhino, threw down their loads and fled. I should like to know what else, in the name of common sense, they ought to have done — sat down and awaited developments? Native experience of wild animals and their ways is far more extensive and thorough than ours, and, as a rule, they behave, in an emergency brought about by an encounter with wild animals, in a perfectly rational manner, based on a knowledge of that particular creature’s habits. They will run away from a rhino and jump aside, well aware that its impetus will carry it past. But they know better than to run away from elephants. I have seen natives, under a charge of these, lie down and remain motionless on the ground, knowing that the short-sighted giants would mistake them for logs and step over them. I have seen Wataweta killing elephants with bows and arrows. There were a lot of men, it is true; still, their audacity was marvelous; they were like king crows. The same people also hunt elephants by hamstringing them and then finishing them off with spears.
Not many years ago, an English officer in Uganda, who had been seized by a lion, was rescued by his own native servant, who beat the animal off with a whip of hippo hide; and a little later, in German East, a German officer whom I personally knew was saved in the same way by an Askari, who, afraid to shoot, drove the lion away with the butt-end of his rifle.
A missionary told me how, in Kondeland, an unarmed native saved a little girl who had been seized by a lion. The latter was playing with the child as a cat plays with a mouse, carrying her in its mouth for a few yards without hurting her, then putting her down and moving away to some distance, to sit down and watch. The native picked up the child and walked slowly backward, step by step, stopping dead still whenever the lion made a rush, and so at last reached a place of safety. I know of several instances when natives have beaten off adult leopards with cudgels, and in the great, lion-infested plains of East Africa, the killing of lions with spears by natives, as was done by Malikanoi’s young son, is by no means uncommon.
When the Masai, bravest and most romantic of natives, walk through the Nyika alone at night, and become aware that lions are near, they sit down and pull their mantles over their heads. They assert that no lion in the open attacks a motionless man whose face he cannot see. The hunting offshoot of the Masai people, the Wandorobbo, who roam through the Nyika in search of game as the Redskins roamed through the American prairie, never sleep in their huts, — temporary shelters meant to last but a few days, — but always in the open, between the huts, and without fires. They pretend that no wild beast has ever carried one of them away at night.
Very few natives fear snakes, that last resource of the adventureless traveler, although, as a rule, they kill them, as they kill lizards or rats. In certain tribes natives exist who have been forbidden by their doctor, after a successful cure, not necessarily from the effects of snake-bite, never again to kill a snake, and they religiously obey the command. The dreaded puff-adder, no doubt on account of its sluggishness, is everywhere treated with contempt. This snake is to some a fetish, and these will not molest it, even if it chooses to take up its temporary residence in one of their huts. I have known one living under these happy circumstances, and growing fat on the ubiquitous rat. The Wanyamwesi and Warukuma, born snake-charmers, handle puff-adders without the slightest fear. Many of these people, it is true, are, or believe themselves to be, immune against snake poison, having undergone, at the hand of their medicine-men, a prolonged and dangerous treatment resulting in Mithradatism.
Where crocodiles abound, natives, in accordance with the saying that familiarity breeds contempt, grow exasperatingly foolhardy, women as well as men, and frequently have to pay the penalty of their imprudence. Relations between the natives and the crocodile, however, are of a complicated and even mysterious nature. Some wear charms against the monsters, in which they implicitly believe; and I must admit that I have never heard of any one of them coming to grief. Also, there undoubtedly are crocodiles that are not man-eaters, although the common assertion that crocodiles that get plenty of fish will not eat man falls flat before the many casualties on the great lakes, which teem with fish. A curious phenomenon is, that there are well-defined stretches in several East African rivers where the crocodiles are perfectly harmless, while above and below these sanctuaries no one, except the above-mentioned bearer of charms, can enter the water with impunity.
Some fifteen years ago I accompanied Lieutenant W—, of the battalion of the King’s African Rifles stationed in Jubaland, on a trip up the Juba River, in the flat-bottomed government steamer which was then, besides native dugouts, the only means of communication on that river. The steamer had to be made fast to the shore every night; and one morning we stopped near a village called Ali Sungura—Ali the rabbit — after its chief. There was at that time living on the Juba a famous wizard, who was looked upon as a sort of paramount chief of all the crocodiles in Jubaland, the which, so it was said, on certain nights of the year, repaired to his hut en masse, to hold a Baraza.
On the morning after our arrival in Ali Sungura, we walked ashore, where we were greeted by the chief, whom we asked if the wizard was there. He said that he was not; and, pointing to a man standing near him, he added, ‘This is his son.’
My companion asked the young fellow if he, too, was immune against crocodiles.
Thereupon the chief pointed to a creek, about two hundred yards in width, and extending some way inland. ‘He swims through here every day,’ he said. ‘He works on the other side.’
We looked, and saw, near the opposite shore, the eye-knobs of many crocodiles protruding from the water. We then asked the wizard’s son himself if the chief had spoken the truth; and, on his replying in the affirmative, we asked him further if he would swim through now, for a rupee. To this he readily assented, and we asked Ali Sungura if it was really safe.
Ali Sungura laughed and declared that there was not the slightest danger. So we promised the man his rupee, and he, after fastening tight around his body the white cloth he was wearing, immediately walked into the water, while Lieutenant W—cocked his rifle and stood ready to shoot.
The wizard’s son soon got out of his depth and took to swimming. He swam toward the opposite side, deliberately, without displaying any hurry and right across the school of crocs, some, but not all, of which dived on his approach. He scrambled ashore, and, after a short rest, came back the same way. He took his rupee with obvious pleasure.
The chief, Ali Sungura himself, had the reputation of being a mchawi, or wizard, specializing as a werewolf. According to rumor, he was in the habit of walking about, at night, in the shape of a wolf, and of doing, in this disguise, as the wolf does. The old superstition, that certain people have the power to assume the shape of some animal, is as widespread in Tropical Africa, as it is in other parts of the world; and the natives of a village can be very positive and quite convinced when they assure you that such and such a lion, or such and such a leopard, is not really an animal, but a mchawi, who is in the habit of taking its shape.
Not long ago, in Nyasaland, I asked an old Yao, who had just returned from Fort Johnston, if the lions had made themselves very unpleasant there of late. He replied that only one had committed depredations, and even killed people, but that he was known to be a mchawi. He added: ‘ They have caught the man, they will take him to the Resident.’
‘And what will happen to him?’ I asked.
‘Oh, nothing,’ he replied with a sigh, ‘they will do nothing to him; the English always want to see everything,’ putting the emphasis on the word ’see.’ I said to myself that it was rather fortunate for that were-lion that the English always want to ‘see everything.’
IV
That there exists, principally in the region of the great lakes, a category, or class, or sect, of people who habitually indulge in satisfying a perverse inclination to feed on the flesh of human corpses is an indisputable fact, to which several administrators and explorers have born testimony. I need mention here, chosen from many others, only Sir Harry Johnston, Mr. J. F. Cunningham, and Mr. Dutkevich, in his contribution to Mr. Peter Macqueen’s book, ln Wildest Africa. The best known are the Bachichi, an organized secret society on the Sese Islands in Lake Victoria, who have for many years occupied the authorities. But they are by no means isolated. I am inclined to think that in other parts of Tropical Africa, where these ghouls occur, they, too, form a fraternity among themselves. This is undoubtedly the case in Buanji, at the northern end of the Livingstone Range, where they are known as Niambuddas. These, however, according to native report, differ from their colleagues in other countries by the sinister detail, that they kill, and then season in a pool of water, those whom they have selected as their victims and decoyed with all the artifices of a thug. In Buanji, no man dares, at night, to go however short a distance from the camp or village by himself, while across the boundary, in Ukinga, the same man will walk about alone, at night, with as little fear as if it were day.
The Bachichi and other corpse-eaters dig out the bodies of people who have died a natural death, and then eat them. They may, otherwise, be perfectly harmless members of the community. In Nyasaland a corpse-eater is called a mchawi, although that is really the Swahili name for wizard. Here, unless otherwise explained, the first interpretation is always that of corpse-eater. As in the case of the were-carnivores, so in this latter case, — but here, I am afraid, with more justification, — public opinion always pretends to be accurately posted concerning the identity of the mchawi. Although feared, however, and treated with a measure of respect, they are not always demonstratively shunned. I know of one case in which a whole village transported its penates half a mile away from the hut of a mchawi, after it had burned to the ground all its own dwellings. The occurrence that gave rise to this wholesale desertion was, so I was told by the people themselves, that some time after the death and burial of one of the mchawi’s two wives, the second one ran away, giving as a reason that, the night before, her husband had brought back into the hut the lifeless body of the deceased. Perhaps a friendly neighbor, who did not weigh overmuch, had helped in a stratagem to get rid of the runaway. But the man’s little boy also ran away; he said that his father kept him walking about all night,and that he could not stand the fatigue. He never went back to his old home to stay. I knew the whole family, and met them often. The mchawi married a third wife, who, as long as I knew her, appeared to be perfectly content and happy; but then, people say that she shares her husband’s tastes. Be all this as it may, Ndalawisi — such is the man’s name—had undoubtedly le physique de l’emploi: bloodshot eyes, lantern-jaws, and a large mouth with protruding yellow fangs and visible gums.
All the men who have been pointed out to me as corpse-eaters have the same type of visage, and it is quite possible that many an innocent man owes his evil reputation only to the fortuitous shape of his face.
Weird and frightful legends have been woven by folklore around these creatures. One thing, however, is certain: natives, when brought in contact with corpses and putrefaction, do not feel the same horror that we do. A bright, intelligent young fellow once asked me, in a matter-of-fact way, if I had never tasted a corpse. To my indignant protest, ‘The smell alone is sufficient to drive a man away,’ he replied, ‘No, the smell is very pleasant!’ And on another occasion I was asked quite seriously if, among the many ‘ tinned stuffs ’ brought into the country by Europeans, there is not also tinned human meat.
This total indifference to the smell of putrefaction and the contact with it had fostered awful customs among the Sakalawas on the southwest coast of Madagascar before the French government stopped, or tried to stop, them by legislation. Corpses were kept exposed for weeks above-ground before burial, the length of the period of exposure depending upon the rank of the individual. Even when you were camped a mile away from the village, the odor, when the wind blew your way, made a continued stay impossible. Dead chiefs were carried in state from village to village for months, and in each village were kept exposed for weeks on a wooden platform; Bacchanalian revelries went on as long as the visit lasted, and it was a common thing for the young men, at the height of the festivities, to go and stand under the platform and rub all over their bodies the liquid matter which oozed from the corpse and trickled through the planks.
Not only the dead, but death itself, seems not to inspire the Sakalawas with any terror. Their burial rites are of the merriest, and anybody unacquainted with the customs of that nation would be convinced, on first witnessing the approach of a funeral cortege, with its gay music, its bullock-cart decorated with bunting, shining pieces of metal, and small mirrors, that it was a nuptial party. Again, suicide by one of the many deadly poisons that abound in every thicket of that island, where, as in Ireland, venomous snakes do not exist, is resorted to quite as a matter of course, on the least provocation, even by children when they have been scolded by their parents.
Nearly all natives, including most of the Mohammedan tribes, are, with the exception of the Somali and the warrior castes of the Nilotic tribes, passionately addicted to drink. There is much truth in what has been written: that the whole population of Tropical and Subtropical Africa is drunk after sunset. Many kinds of fermented liquor exist, some of which are very palatable, as, for instance, the honey-beer of the Wataweta, or a kind of champagne that the Wabena produce out of the sap of a bamboo, which, curiously enough, refuses to yield its precious liquid when it is transplanted from its own country. At the time of year when this sap is collected, both men and women drink it to excess, until they fall down senseless near their fires. I have been shown in Ubena many little children who had been badly burned because their mothers had collapsed too close to the fire, and many grown-up persons who, being unable from drunkenness to crawl back into their huts, had been shockingly mutilated by hyenas.
Pombe— beer made either from bananas or from maize and millet—is the curse of the African native. Entirely unable as he is by constitution to resist temptation, he drinks as long as the state of his finances and the existing provisions permit. It has always seemed to me as if the effects of intoxication on a native were different from what they are on a European. They may be similar when he gets hold of whiskey; but they undoubtedly differ in cases of drunkenness produced by pombe. In a native who has got drunk on pombe, the effect is none the less violent because it is less apparent in the beginning. Its climax is reached some twenty-four to thirty-six hours after the libation has ceased, and manifests itself in a nervous irritability which often leads to disastrous consequences. Some individuals in this state, although sober to all appearances, become a grave danger to their neighbors. It was in this condition, as I have been informed on good authority, that the Police Askaris in a certain East African colony committed all those wanton acts of cruelty which created such a sensation in Europe a few years before the war. One need not go very far, perhaps, to recover the recipe of the famous drink of the Assassins.
It is probable that the shortness of memory, with which most natives are afflicted to quite a remarkable degree as regards things which do not touch them directly, is due in part to this racial vice and in part to the abuse of the elixirs mentioned above. This deficiency of memory is a palpable evil, not, I think, sufficiently recognized as such by those who employ natives, and is the source of many mistakes and accidents that are attributed to culpable neglect or evil intent. The very tone of voice in which a native says, ‘Nimesahau’ (I have forgotten), implies that, for him at least, to forget is a conclusive excuse, which precludes all possibility of guilt and desert of reproach. Very frequently they do not remember what they have said a few minutes before; they will give you half a dozen different names in succession for the same mountain or river, and look quite surprised when, glancing at your notebook, you tell them that they have given you an entirely different name a little earlier in the day. This weak memory, added to the difficulty which, like Darwin’s Aborigines of the Terra del Fuego, even comparatively civilized negroes have in ‘ Understanding the simplest alternative,’ is the chief obstacle that travelers encounter to getting correct information. And yet, — another anomaly,— African negroes arc the greatest linguists on earth.
It has happened to me, not once only, but repeatedly, that I have come among a tribe accompanied by men who had never heard its idiom; and, before a month was over, they were, without a single exception, able to converse fluently with the inhabitants, and that even when that particular language differed from their own as much as does English from Italian.
But not that only; although I speak very indifferent Swahili, — a language which it is very easy to learn to speak badly, and almost impossible for a European to learn to speak faultlessly, — new servants who entered my employ learned to speak it in a few weeks simply by my talking to them. That they learned it from me was quite evident from the fact that they acquired all my mistakes! This facility in learning new languages is, perhaps, connected with the extraordinary mimetic power of natives, which Darwin also mentions with regard to Kaffirs as well as Fuegians and Australians.
Besides their facility in learning new languages, negroes also have a remarkable gift for communicating with each other by signs. I have often been astounded to notice how all the inhabitants of a village, including the children, were able to converse fluently with a deaf-mute. A few signs with the lips and the fingers were sufficient to convey the meaning of a long sentence, and the mute did not seem to be in the least inconvenienced by his inability to enunciate words.
It would appear as if, in the different colonies of East and Central Africa, very few natives belonging to the households of Europeans speak the latters language. This apparent ignorance, however, is open to doubt. It seems curious that ‘boys’ who are not supposed to understand a word of English or Portuguese should constantly be caught listening to their employers’ conversation; and that vital secrets, exchanged between two Europeans, in the presence of natives who, when addressed directly in their master’s language, reply only with a vacant stare, should, within twenty-four hours, inevitably become public property. Natives are as inquisitive as they are incapable of keeping a secret. The latter is a fortunate evil. Were negroes able to hold their tongues, there would not be a white man alive in Africa to-day.
Of course, the inaccuracies in the statements of negroes are, in the majority of cases, due to deliberate lying. But sometimes they are unpremeditated and unintentional.
It is extremely difficult to find, in native statements, the line of demarcation between deliberate falsehood, lapse of memory, and a congenital inability to distinguish accurately between the real and the unreal. They all lie, all, without a single exception, though in various degrees, and they themselves know and sometimes admit it; and I have met one, at least, who expressed to me, with apparently genuine feeling, his regret for this hereditary defect. The average native does not appear to see any fundamental difference between reality and imagination — a point of view for which, if they only knew it, they could find a measure of justification in the writings of more than one philosopher.
For their lies, they have the funniest excuses. Some time ago I missed one of my men, and when I inquired after him, I got, front a lad named Mohammad, the answer: ‘He has gone into the forest to dig for medicine.’
‘What is the matter with him?’ I asked.
’He has great pains in his head and stomach.’
Sometime later, Wasi — that was the absent man’s name — came back, carrying firewood, and when I asked him why he had not told me that he was ill, he was very much surprised. There was absolutely nothing the matter with him. I then soundly rated Mohammad for telling such lies, when my head-boy interfered by saying in a conciliatory tone, ‘He did not lie, master. He said it only to make conversation.’
Native logic runs in grooves different from ours, often in an exactly contrary direction. When I listen to their arguments, I am often reminded of Leonard da Vinci’s famous reversed drawing of the castle of Amboise. On one occasion, one of my boys told me that another boy had told him something, which, although a matter of small importance, he was not supposed to communicate to others. I taxed this other boy with having betrayed my confidence, but he flatly denied having spoken. I confronted them both, and a friendly dispute ensued, which led to no result. I then said to the boy who, according to the other, had spoken without leave, ‘Why are you not angry with Soliman for telling such a lie about you? ’ To which he smilingly replied, ‘No! I am not angry! Why should I be angry? He lied! If he had spoken the truth, then I should be angry.’
(A further paper by Mr. Coudcnhove will appear later.)