. Land and peoples of the Kasai; being a narrative of a two years' journey among the cannibals of the equatorial forest and other savage tribes of the south-western Congo . had been heard. When we turned to lookat him our surprise was great. The white trousers, frockcoat and grey felt hat had disappeared ; the smug school-master, to whom we had taken an instinctive dislike onthe previous day, was transformed into a native hunter,who, clad only in a very scanty loin cloth and grasping alight spear, was eagerly beckoning us to follow him. Westarted off at once, but although we were able to get q
. Land and peoples of the Kasai; being a narrative of a two years' journey among the cannibals of the equatorial forest and other savage tribes of the south-western Congo . had been heard. When we turned to lookat him our surprise was great. The white trousers, frockcoat and grey felt hat had disappeared ; the smug school-master, to whom we had taken an instinctive dislike onthe previous day, was transformed into a native hunter,who, clad only in a very scanty loin cloth and grasping alight spear, was eagerly beckoning us to follow him. Westarted off at once, but although we were able to get quiteclose to the animals we could never see them. The cate-chist proved himself to be an excellent stalker, as werealso the one or two children who accompanied him. Welearned subsequently that this man would frequently chasethe buffaloes out of the plantations at night, and that on oneoccasion during the dry season when some elephants hadthreatened his crops he and a few of his elder pupils hadsucceeded in driving them away. On one or two occasionshe accompanied us to look for buffalo by night, and I amsure that he would have taken part in our shooting expedi- • I. UP THE KWILU RIVER 247 tions by daylight to the detriment of his childrens studies,had he not been laid up with a bad attack of fever duringthe greater part of our stay at Pana. These evenings spentwith him in the bush completely altered the opinion we hadat first formed of the man. We never succeeded in obtain-ing a beast from the herd which fed so close to the mission;the passage of the children to and from the villages at sun-rise and sunset prevented their leaving the forest during thehours of daylight, but with the buffaloes further to thewest we were more fortunate. The country between the Kwilu and the Inzia at thispoint consists of gently undulating grassy plains, entirelydevoid of bushes, in which are situated many pools andswamps where buffalo drink and linger long after sunriseto crop the sweet grass. Th
Size: 1083px × 2308px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookpublisherlondonconstable
