498

WEAVING GRASS-CLOTH.

The Apingi are, for Africa, a very industrious people. The men do some work here, and this is an extraordinary sight in Western Africa. They use the fibrous parts of the leaf of a palm, which grows in great abundance here, to make a fine grasscloth, for which they are noted among all the tribes. It is called mbongo when in squares, and, by the tedious course of trade from tribe to tribe, comes even to the sea-shore. The other tribes farther eastward also make this cloth. They told me that this palm (which is a new species not familiar to me) perished when it had once borne seed. Though found growing wild, it is also planted about all their houses, and, with some fruit-trees they have, is property, which only the owner may use.

The having property in trees of any kind is something new to me in Africa, and shows that the Apingi have made a very important step in advance of the Bakalai and Shekiani, and all the other tribes I have met. Moreover, an Apingi village stands and remains in the same place, at least for a long time. They are a settled people, and need only flocks and cattle to make them a very prospering nation. Among the other tribes described in this book a town is only a temporary resting-place, abandoned at the first death; land and trees, of whatever kind, are free to any one; and even with the Mpongwe of the Gaboon, who have long been under trading influence, though they can not afford to remove a whole town, the house in which a man has died is destroyed, never to be raised again on the same spot. The reader will appreciate the delight with which I hailed a people who live on the same spot for several generations; who cultivate and acknowledge private property in trees; and who make cloth.

The men are the weavers among the Apingi. The loom is a complicated instrument, much resembling that used by the Ashira, who have, no doubt, got it from these neighbors of theirs. The loom is stretched under the piazza of the house, and it is a very pretty and cheering sight, as one walks along the street, to see a number of busy weavers weaving this fine and very useful cloth.

The Apingi have the reputation of making the softest grasscloth in all this region. Some of their colored patterns are very pretty. The pieces, owing to the short staple of the fibre used, and their inability to give it a longer twist, are never more than three feet long by about two wide. To work in colors, they first

A FETICH TO KILL LEOPARDS.

499

dye the threads, and very ingeniously work them in in the weav ing. It is a day's work to make one plain square; and to make one of the colored ones takes two, and sometimes three days. The square is about two feet long and eighteen inches in width. When sent off to sell they are tied up in packages of twenty or thirty. In this shape they find their way even down to the coast, and are every where used for garments, and also for musquito-bars. My bars were always of this stuff. The natives prefer it to our common trade-cottons; and here, in Apingi-land, the people did not care to trade their cloth for mine, for which I did not blame them.

To make a ndengui several of the mbongo pieces are sewed together with grass thread and a wooden needle, and the sewing is done quite as neatly as ours. The men are the tailors. From six to nine cloths go to a ndengui. The dandies among the Apingi wear sometimes a cloth thrown over the shoulder, more for ornament than use. The women are strictly restricted to the very moderate costume I have already described.

18th. Yesterday I told Remandji I wanted to go on a leopardhunt. He immediately brought me a man who had a fetich which enabled him to kill leopards ad libitum, and without personal danger. I laughed. The man said, "Laugh, oh white man, but you will see."

He went through a mass of ceremonies, then told me I must not accompany him, but that next day I should see a leopard. His big monda would help him.

This morning he started, and, to my surprise, came in in the afternoon with a handsome leopard. He asked so much for the skin, which they value for ornaments, that I would not buy it. I suppose they must be plenty in the forest, and shall go out and kill for myself.

The strip of skin cut from the head along the spine to the tail is used here as a war-belt, after being charmed by the fetich-man or ouganga. This makes them invulnerable, they say. No spear, or arrow, or bullet can hit a man who has such a belt on. Of course, as only one belt can be made from each skin, and nothing but a leopard's skin will answer, these bear a high price, every warrior placing a great account upon his personal safety.

500

SINGULAR CAUSE FOR FEAR.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Bible-reading.-The Negroes are frightened and run away.-The Ceremony of Bongo.-Its Importance.-Curious Phase of African Slavery.-Preparations to ascend the River.-Apingi Villages.-Fetiches.-Superstitions.-Spiders.-Curious Manner of catching their Prey.-New Animals.-Capsized.-Putrid Corpse in a Village.—Curious Manner of Burial.-Leave the River.—The Region beyond. Return to Remandgi's Town.-Explore the Mountains.-The Isogo.-Beyond the Isogo.-Ultima Thule.—My Shoes give out.—Starvation.—Great Suffering. Shoot a Gorilla.-Illness.-Home-sick.-The Return to the Sea-shore.Etita: a very singular Disease.-The Remedy.-Heavy Rains.-An uncomfortable Night.-Fierce Attack of Bashikouay Ants.-Difference of Seasons.-Arrival in Biagano.-Close.

December 19th was Sunday by my account. I sat in my hut and read the Bible, and a great crowd came around and watched me with wondering eyes. I explained to them that when I read it. it was as though God talked with me. Then, to gratify them, I read aloud, and afterward tried to explain to them something of the teachings of Christ. Presently I let the leaves of the book slip through my hands to show them how many there were. To my great surprise, the little noise I thus made seemed to frighten them very much. In an instant the whole crowd, Remandji and all, had disappeared, with symptoms of the greatest terror. My first effort to speak to them the Word of God seemed to meet with little success.

By-and-by I persuaded some to come back, and they told me that the noise I made was like that made by their spirit. They seemed to think that I had some communication with Ococoo, who is their chief spirit.

To-day many people returned to their villages disappointed that I did not make for them cloth, copper, and iron, which nothing will convince them that I can not make in great profusion by a mere effort of the will.

On the 20th, as I was speaking with Remandji, a man came and laid his hands on the chief's head. He said, "Father, I want to serve you. I choose you for my master, and will never return to my old master."

This ceremony is called bongo, and is a curious phase of Afri

THE CEREMONY OF BONGO.

501 can slavery. It obtains more or less in all the tribes. When a slave gets hard treatment from his master, and has reason to be dissatisfied, he slips off to another village and chooses for himself a new master. This man is obliged to accept and protect him. He can not refuse. Nor is any "palaver" made on this account. No one, for instance, could hold Remandji responsible for this act. He may even visit immediately the village from which the slave has run away; only the slave himself must not go back thither, else he exposes himself to be reclaimed. The bongo is given always to a person of another village, and always to one of another family or clan in the same tribe. The technical term is to "beat bongo," in allusion to the laying on of hands. This singular custom has a marked influence on the condition of the slaves, who have always open to them this legitimate and toleraably easy avenue of escape from tyranny. It prevents families being separated, in particular, for nothing will make a slave leave his master so quickly as to have his wife sold away from him.

To-day canoes were being procured for an ascent of the river. They got quite a little fleet together for me; but all are small, and so easily capsized that navigation is by no means comfortable to me, who can scarce swim a stroke. However, there was no help for it, so I prepared for accidents by tying my compass to a cord fastened about my neck, then tied my gun fast by a long rope to the canoe, which would float in any case, and took, besides this, only a little box containing a change of clothes and two pairs of shoes (the most necessary article hereabouts to the traveler). Then Remandji, myself, and a paddler got in and started, followed by the fleet.

The canoes are quite flat in the bottom, sit almost entirely above water, and are very well designed to stem the swift current of this river, which runs, at this time of the year, at the rate of four or five miles per hour.

Before we started necessity compelled me to spend a morning at the river-side washing my clothes. The negroes have so little idea of even the commonest cleanliness, that they never wash their scanty garments. When I make a considerable stay with any tribe I generally manage to teach some woman how to wash. It is a disagreeable labor, which I can not bear. I would much rather cook, though that generally falls to some one else.

We ascended the river at very slow speed, passing the shores

at the rate of about two or three miles the hour. The people sang as they paddled. I sat very still and very uncomfortably in the bottom of the boat.

We passed several villages in about three hours after starting. These Apingi villages are not as pretty to look upon as those of the Ashira. In the latter I find always a veranda next the house, where the cooking is done; while in the Apingi house the same room has to serve as store-room, bed-room, and kitchen. The Apingi houses are built of bark, as the Ashira, and the roof is made of large leaves. There is generally one larger house in the village, which belongs to the chief. The villages have no high fence of pickets, which is an evidence that the people are not warlike.

We landed at the village of Agoby, a chief I had seen before. He gave me some fowls, but complained that the leopards had eaten up all his goats. I saw here the largest ashangou-tree I ever saw. It was hung full of the olive-shaped fruit. This is larger than our olives, quite fleshy, and, when ripe, of a dark red color. This tree, and a number of others, Agoby told me had been planted by his grandfather, which shows that property has been respected among these people for at least two or three generations. Most of these villages are surrounded by groves of these trees. The fruit is boiled, and has then an agreeable acidity both pleasant and wholesome in this climate.* I find that the superstitions of this people are as great as those of the tribes nearer the sea. They hold that death is caused by witchcraft; but yet they do not remove after every death as do the Camma, Shekiani, Bakalai, and the other tribes. Among the sea-shore tribes the Apingi have great repute as wizards, and Apingi-land is the land of aniemba, where any one may learn to become a powerful sorcerer. Consequently, the Apingi fetiches are very highly valued by the coast tribes, especially those professing to remove barrenness. I had special instructions from a number of childless fathers in my town on the sea-shore to bring them some Apingi mondas, but the price proved too high for my means and my good-nature, and I did not, either, care to give any such indorsement to their superstitious nonsense.

* In the forests near the sea-shore is found a tree belonging to the same family as the ashangou, and which is there called the ashafou. But the fruit of this is less fleshy and more acid than that of the ashangou, and, when ripe, is of a rosy hue.