The chef de poste knew that any attempt at reprisals on his part could only end in his finding a few deserted villages, and probably in his losing a number of men in the process, so he could do nothing but ignore the incident. Time went by, and one day the officer was amazed to learn from the friendly chief that the Tono were anxious to make his acquaintance, and if he would agree to let bygones be bygones, they would call upon him at Kole. He was delighted. He imagined that his patience with them had touched the heart of the Bankutu, and, no doubt, indulged in many wild dreams of turning his district into a happy peaceful country, where murder and cannibalism would be unknown.

Having pledged his word that no harm should befal the Tono chief and his followers, he appointed a day for a meeting at the Government station. The natives duly appeared, and, before entering the post, laid down their bows and arrows beside a little stream, coming unarmed into the presence of the white man, who, on his side, was careful to avoid any display of armed force by letting his soldiers be too much in evidence. The interview was of a highly satisfactory nature; gifts were exchanged, and the official preached a nice little homily to the Bankutu upon the desirability of peace, the foolishness of eating messengers, and the pleasant conditions which would prevail if the natives would only trust him and come often to visit him. The Tono expressed their regret at having inconvenienced the white man by dining off his servants, and promised that they would never transgress again.

Then they departed, leaving the chef de poste very pleased with his day’s work. On arriving at the brook beside which they had left their arms the Tono found two or three of the soldiers’ wives washing clothes; in a moment they had shot them, and, carrying off their bodies, disappeared into the forest! So much for the good faith of the Bankutu. Obviously such incorrigible rogues require a severe lesson, and it would appear that after an outrage such as I have described a strong force should be sent into their country to administer to them the punishment that they undoubtedly deserve. But the Bankutu method of making war in their native forest is such that a military expedition would have but little chance of dealing a blow at them. The roads leading from village to village are the merest tracks, so narrow that one’s elbows brush against the bushes on either hand as one walks along them, while the forest is so dense that one can scarcely distinguish anything even a few feet from the wayside. In such a country where any shooting must take place at the shortest of ranges, the bows of the Bankutu are at least equal to the rifles of the soldiers, and their poisoned arrows are certain to kill where a bullet might only effect the slightest of wounds. It would be perfectly easy for the Bankutu to wait by the side of the track concealed in the undergrowth and quietly pick off the troops as they passed in single file, for flanking parties, if thrown out on either side of the road, would literally have to cut their way through the tangle of bushes, and would thus render the advance of the whole column so slow as to destroy any faint hope that might exist of its coming unexpectedly upon a village and surprising its inhabitants. The forest, which is almost impassable to troops attired in blouses and breeches, and encumbered by their accoutrements, scarcely hinders the movements of the scantily clad Bankutu. But the natives have other methods of warfare, hardly less effective than ambushing the advancing column, and absolutely unattended by danger to themselves. In addition to placing little spikes, steeped in deadly poison, beneath the fallen leaves on the road to wound the naked feet of the soldiers, one prick from which will often prove fatal in less than half-an-hour, they dig pits in the track, carefully concealed with a covering of leaves, at the bottom of which poisoned stakes are in readiness to impale any one who slips into them. This is a very common form of trap used in most parts of Africa for the capture of game, and the existence of which makes it necessary to walk with great caution when shooting in parts of the forest where such devices are employed. The Bankutu often dig such pits in their villages before deserting them at the approach of the troops, and place chickens upon them in the hope that the soldiers will be entrapped when they attempt to take the fowls. Another and far more ingenious trap used in war is one which consists of a bow with a poisoned arrow set, after the manner of a spring gun, in such a way that the removal of a branch across the roadway or some similar obstacle will launch forth the arrow upon its errand of death from beneath the shelter of the underwood. These automatic bow traps are often set in the deserted huts, so that the pushing aside of the doors when the soldiers search the village will release the arrows. Upon one occasion the chef de poste of Kole entered a Bankutu village accompanied by his troops; as usual, the place was deserted, but the sound of a child crying attracted the officer’s attention to the edge of the forest behind the huts, where he saw a tiny baby evidently abandoned by its mother in her hasty flight into the woods. Filled with pity he hurried to the spot, and, calling to a soldier to take charge of the baby, he was about to pick it up when the soldier pulled him forcibly backwards. The man had noticed a string round the baby’s body which was connected with the bushes behind it. Examination of the bushes disclosed a spring-bow trap to which the child had been attached as bait!

These are but a few of the stratagems to which the Bankutu resort not only in time of actual war, but at any time when dealing with the white man or his servants. The chef de poste at Kole finds it unwise to go even the two hours’ march inland to the spot where the Government station until recently had been situated without ten soldiers to whom ball cartridges have been served out. It is scarcely astonishing that warfare in the forest, where the soldiers perish without so much as setting eyes on an enemy, is extremely trying to the nerves of the troops. The greatest success which a military expedition could achieve would be merely the burning of a few villages, which would be rebuilt in no time without even inconveniencing the natives; and the authorities strictly prohibit the burning of villages in war. The chef de poste at Kole, therefore, has about as thankless a task as could fall to the lot of man. In addition to the difficulty of his work and the risks he runs in the execution of his duty, his life is rendered miserable, and constantly threatened by the terrible nature of the climate.

Closely surrounded by the impenetrable forest, there is a lack of air at Kole which renders the great heat of noonday oppressive in the extreme, while at dusk a light grey mist descends upon the station, so damp that one’s clothes become wringing wet if one sits out of doors after sundown, and the woods emit a fœtid stench of decaying vegetation which is often nearly sufficient to make one sick if one is out in the forest as darkness comes on. The grey mist which is, I believe, common to most parts of the Congo forest, rises again very late in the morning at Kole, for the steamers which occasionally come up the Lukenye can rarely get under way before nine or ten o’clock, and I have known the mist over the parade ground to be so thick as to prevent the soldiers from drilling before eleven in the morning. Some idea of the amount of moisture in the air of the forest may be obtained when I say that a gun left uncovered in one’s tent becomes red with rust in twenty-four hours. In the daytime the atmosphere of the woods resembles that of a hot-house; at night that of a well. With a climate like this and swarms of mosquitos it is not to be wondered at that the white man is continually down with fever, and the presence of the innumerable tsetse-flies on the Lukenye adds yet another risk—that of sleeping sickness—to the already sufficient number that exist owing to the natives and the climate around Kole.

We succeeded during our stay at this salubrious post in becoming more or less friendly with one or two individuals of the Bankutu, and from them we contrived to learn a little about the manners and customs of that delightful people, in addition to their methods of war which I have just described. I have said that they are cannibals; but the term “cannibal,” which is, of course, applicable to people who only partake of human flesh at the rarest intervals in accordance with some ceremonial custom, is hardly strong enough to describe the man-eating tendencies of the Bankutu. They actually stalk and shoot men for food as other natives hunt animals, and this despite the fact that their country teems with game. But the most remarkable thing about them is that they never bury their slaves; no matter of what complaint he may have died, a slave is invariably eaten. The reason for this disgusting practice is the fear that the ghost of a slave might return to haunt a master who had ill-treated him, whereas if the body is eaten the Bankutu believe that the soul cannot return. The habit of eating slaves is carried to such an extent that a lazy slave is often sold as food, and in a quarrel between two Bankutu the aggrieved party will frequently kill a slave belonging to the offender and dine off his body in company with his friends. It might possibly be imagined that people so debased as the Bankutu would fall upon a human body like hyenas upon the carcase of an animal and tear it limb from limb, eating the flesh raw as they rent it from the bones, yet such is not the case. Great care is exercised upon the cooking of human meat, and it is even served up in quite a civilised manner, in little rolls like bacon. I have not given by any means all the information at my disposal with regard to the cannibalistic habits of the Bankutu, but I have said enough to show that even to this day there exists in Central Africa, in the heart of the great equatorial forest, a people whose daily lives are as wild and whose customs are as disgusting as those of any savages who figure in a boys’ book of adventure. To many people in England it may seem incredible that tribes can exist in such a state of barbarity at the beginning of the twentieth century, but, despite the opening up of Africa, the mines, the railways, the hundred and one ways in which European influence has begun to make itself felt over enormous areas of the dark continent, there are yet a great many out-of-the-way places where the savage is as much a savage to-day as he was, say, five hundred years ago. Some day, no doubt, the forest around Kole may be as peaceful a district as any in Africa, but until the Bankutu have been completely brought into subjection there can never be peace in the land. How to deal with such people is one of the hardest problems the Government has to face. It is, of course, possible that a given white man, who, possessed of infinite patience and tact, might by his own personal magnetism influence the Bankutu for good; but the process would take quite an ordinary lifetime, and lifetimes are very short in the forest. The only course appears to me to be to encourage the establishment of settlements in the Bankutu country by some such friendly and progressive peoples as the Batetela, the excellent results of whose occupation of the north of the Lodja I shall describe in due course. I hear that some of the Batetela who mutinied several years ago when serving in the army, and who, after being a scourge to the southern part of the Congo, have only recently been captured, are to be allowed to establish themselves in the district around Kole. The Bankutu are far too suspicious to combine with the mutineers in any future rising against the Government, and one may hope that the ex-soldiers may soon be able to render their villages as prosperous as have their kinsmen farther to the east.

If to no one else, the forest should prove attractive to the naturalist, although its impenetrable character renders the stalking of game by a white man almost a waste of time. The woods abound in animal life, very much of which must be quite unknown to zoologists in Europe, and which will, in all probability, remain unknown for many years to come owing to the inhospitable nature of the land and the people. Monkeys are represented by many species, several of them doubtless undescribed, while pigs and small antelopes abound. We were lucky enough to obtain specimens of both male and female of a very small duiker which had not previously been brought to Europe, and which Mr. Oldfield Thomas has done me the honour of naming after myself, cephalophos simpsoni. This little antelope is of a vandyke brown colour on the back, passing through various shades to a light brown on the chest; its horns are very small. It must exist in considerable numbers around Kole, but one’s chances of obtaining a shot at the wary little beast are extremely remote. The antelope family is also represented in this neighbourhood by a bush-buck, a sitatunga, and at least one other duiker. Elephant and buffalo are not to be found near Kole, and the Lukenye is too rapid to form a haunt of hippopotami; large game is therefore conspicuous by its absence. I may here mention that during our wanderings in the Kasai we never heard of the existence of any animal which could possibly have been the okapi; but I should not like to say that it may not exist in the forest to the north of the Sankuru. Our stay at Kole was not marked by any act of aggression on the part of the Bankutu, and passed off without any serious discomfort to ourselves, with the exception of sundry attacks of malaria, to which I was now very frequently subject. During our sojourn there the chef de poste received a visit from another official who really belonged to the administration of the district of Lac Leopold II., but who, finding himself with his steamer on the Lukenye river within easy reach of Kole, had continued his voyage to pay a visit to the chef de poste. Upon his return he narrowly escaped drowning, for his vessel was swept by the force of the stream on to some rocks near Dikese, and sank in a few moments, the European captain saving himself by swimming, while the Government official was rescued by one of the native crew. No lives were lost, but the white men and crew who were thus forced to take shelter in the forest were lucky to escape being eaten, a fate which overtook the passengers on the Ville de Bruxelles when that vessel foundered on the Upper Congo in 1909. We had wished to visit the Tono, whom I have already mentioned as living a few days’ march from Kole, for this sub-tribe of the Bankutu were said to manufacture a certain kind of strange currency of which we were anxious to obtain specimens, but such a journey was impossible. Lieutenant Peffer told us that we could certainly go if we wished to do so, but that he himself should insist upon accompanying us with at least thirty of the fifty soldiers which constituted the garrison of Kole. To go with the troops meant that we should never behold a native and would probably be ambushed on the way, so we abandoned all idea of carrying out an extended tour in the country of the Bankutu, from whom we could really hope to glean very little information beyond what we had been able to pick up from a few friendly individuals. We accordingly, after a little over three weeks spent at Kole, took the opportunity afforded by the arrival of a small steam tug to proceed up the Lukenye to Lodja, by no means sorry to leave behind us such treacherous natives as the Bankutu.