the forest; his idea being apparently either to give rise to
more elephants, or to induce the forest spirits to bring more
elephants into the district. Meanwhile the carcases were going*
bad, rapidly bad, and the smell for a mile round was strong
enough to have taken the paint off a door. Moreover there
were flies, most of the flies in West Africa, I imagine, and—
but I will say no more. I thought before this experience
that I had touched bottom in smells when once I spent the
outside of a week in a village, on the sand bank in front of
which a portly hippopotamus, who had been shot up river, got
stranded, and proceeded energetically to melt into its elemental
gases ; but that was a passing whiff to this.
Dr. Nassau tells me that the manner in which the ivory
gained by one of these hunts is divided is as follows :_“ The
witch doctor, the chiefs, and the family on whose ground the
enclosure is built, and especially the household whose women
first discovered the animals, decide in council as to the division
of the tusks and the share of the flesh to .be given to the:
crowd of outsiders. The next day the tusks are removed and
each family represented in the assemblage cuts up and distributes
the flesh.” In the hunt I saw finished, the elephants had
not been discovered, as in the case Dr. Nassau above speaks
of, in a plantation by women, but by a party of rubber hunters
in the forest some four or five miles from any village, and the
ivory that would have been allotted to the plantation holder
in the former case, went in this case to the young rubber
hunters.
Of the method of catching game in traps I have already
spoken. Such are the pursuits, sports and pastimes of my
friends the Fans. I have been considerably chaffed both by
whites and blacks about my partiality for this tribe, but as I
like Africans in my way— not a la Sierra Leone and
these Africans have more of the qualities I like than any
other tribe I have met, it is but natural that I should prefer
them. They are brave and so you can respect them, which
is an essential element in a friendly feeling. 'They are on
the whole a fine race, particularly those in the mountain districts
of the Sierra del Cristal, where one continually sees
magnificent specimens of human beings, both male and
female. Their colour is light bronze, many of the men
have beards, and albinoes are rare among them. The average
height in the mountain districts is five feet six to five
feet eight, the difference in stature between men and women
not being great. Their countenances are very bright and
expressive, and if once you have been among them, you can
never mistake a Fan. But it is in their mental characteristics
that their difference from the lethargic, dying-out
coast tribes is most marked. The Fan is full of fire, temper,
intelligence and go ; very teachable, rather difficult to manage,
quick to take offence, and utterly indifferent to human life.
I ought to say that other people, who should know him better
than I, say he is a treacherous, thievish, murderous cannibal.
I never found him treacherous ; but then I never trusted
him, remembering one of the aphorisms of my great teacher
Captain Boler of Bonny, “ It’s not safe to go among bush
tribes, but if you are such a fool as to go, you needn t go and
be a bigger fool still, you’ve done enough.” And Captain
Boler’s other great aphorism was : “ Never be afraid of a black
man.” “ What if I can’t help it ? ” said I. “ Don’t show it,”
said he. To these precepts I humbly add another: “ Never
lose your head.” My most favourite form of literature, I may
remark, is accounts of mountaineering exploits, though I have
never seen a glacier or a permanent snow mountain in my
life. I do not care a row of pins how badly they may be
written, and what form of bumble-puppy grammar and composition
is employed, as long as the writer will walk along the
edge of a precipice with a sheer fall of thousands of feet on
one side and a sheer wall on the other ; or better still crawl up
an arête with a precipice on either. Nothing on earth would
persuade me to do either of these things myself, but they remind
me of bits of country I have been through where you
walk along a narrow line of security with gulfs of murder
looming on each side, and where in exactly the same way you
are as safe as if you were in your easy chair at home, as long
as you get sufficient holding ground : not on rock in the
bush village inhabited by murderous cannibals, but on
ideas in those men’s and women’s minds ; and these ideas,
which I think I may say you will always find, give you safety.