Upon quitting Kenge we left the country of the Bakongo, leaving behind us all serious difficulties in our journey from the Loange to the Kasai. The Bashilele of Makasu were remarkably friendly; they were dignified in their manner towards us, and although, when we showed them the clockwork elephant, they were evidently much impressed by it, we could clearly see that the natives were by no means afraid of us. They had expressed their willingness to receive us and to treat us well, and so long as we refrained from any sort of aggression towards them, it was evidently their intention to let us pass freely through their country. While staying in this village we gathered a certain amount of information about the Bashilele and the Bakongo. These peoples are in reality two divisions of the same tribe, both of them owing allegiance to the same great chief, Goman Vula. From various unmistakable pieces of evidence to be found in their culture, Torday has been able to definitely establish the fact that the inhabitants of the country between the Loange and the Kasai are an offshoot of the great Bushongo nation, as he had so strongly suspected after his researches at the Mushenge. He found that many of the mythical heroes of the Bushongo were well known to the Bashilele, and the use of a divining instrument in the shape of a crocodile, exactly similar to that in use among the Bushongo, as well as similarity in the shape of their houses, are examples of some of the points which indicate the close relationship between these peoples. With regard to Goman Vula, we learned that his village lies two days’ march to the north of Makasu. It is, of course, difficult to estimate how many miles this represents, for the only means that the native possesses of indicating the length of a journey is to show the point in the heavens at which the sun would be when the traveller arrived at his destination were he to start at dawn. We roughly calculated the probable distance from Makasu to Goman Vula’s capital at about fifty miles by the track, but as the crow flies the distance would most likely be considerably shorter. In displaying our elephant at Makasu we were careful to explain that by nature our “fetish” was peaceful, and that only when any violence was offered to us or to our followers would it cause harm to befall the natives through whose country we were travelling, and this explanation seemed to set the minds of the natives completely at rest with regard to the peaceful nature of our visit. During the two or three days that we spent in this village resting after the excitements of Kenge, we were several times taken out in search of guinea-fowl by the Bashilele, who seemed quite ready to do anything that we asked them, and who were very much astonished at seeing birds shot on the wing. We discovered that the rumours we had heard of the presence of the Badjok traders in the district had been quite true, for we found outside Makasu a group of the temporary grass shelters which these people erect when travelling, for it appears that they do not as a rule reside in the villages which they visit. This encampment had been only recently deserted, and we learned that its inhabitants had been engaged solely in collecting rubber, to be subsequently sold to the white traders on the Kasai, so that our fears for the safety of our porters had in reality been quite unfounded. We could not learn much from the Bashilele of Makasu with regard to the number of stages which we should have to march before reaching the Kasai, but they agreed to carry our loads to another village, also called Makasu, about ten miles to the south-east, where they said we should be able to obtain more precise information. Our way lay beside the course of a brook named the Miloa, a tributary of the Lumbunji, in the swamps around the course of which we found many fresh tracks of elephants.

Our reception at the second village of Makasu was as friendly as at the first. Torday explained to the natives that our only desire was to reach our homes, and in order to do this it was necessary for us to proceed to one of the factories of the Kasai Company upon the shores of the Kasai, of the existence of which the people of this village had heard. But the chief of the second village of Makasu appeared by no means anxious for us to leave at once, so we willingly settled down to spend a few days in his village, where we could enjoy a splendid opportunity of studying the daily life of a people among whom European influence has not yet begun to be felt. Every village between the Loange and the Kasai appears to be entirely self-supporting; every man manufactures his own garments, weaving the cloth from palm fibre in the same way as do the Bushongo; accompanied by his dogs, he participates in hunting expeditions, supplying his family with meat from his share of the game, and the Bashilele as hunters are far superior to their kinsmen around the Mushenge; he makes his own bows, bow-strings, and the shafts of his arrows, while he forms and decorates with carving the wooden cups from which he drinks his palm wine; his wives cultivate sufficient land to supply the family needs with cassava; his children tend his chickens and goats. In fact, the only things which a man must buy, being unable to make them for himself, are iron objects, such as arrow and spear-heads, knives, and bracelets, all of which are the work of the village blacksmith, who is paid for them in meat, fowls, food stuffs, or palm cloth.

When not engaged in hunting, clearing the ground for plantations, or in the manufacture of cloth, the Bashilele men lead a life of complete idleness, smoking green tobacco in carved wooden pipes in the sheds or beneath the shade of the palm-trees outside the village walls. Early in the morning a little cassava dough is eaten, and the women go forth to work in the fields, returning in the evening to pound the cassava root into flour, and to cook the evening meal. Such is the daily life of a people upon whom European civilisation has as yet made not the slightest impression. So little do the Bashilele wander beyond the immediate surroundings of their own homes, that very few of the inhabitants of any village are acquainted with the track even to the next settlement of their own tribe; and we found in travelling through their country that often, even when carrying our loads to another Bashilele village, the men would arm as if for war—that is to say, they would take with them from twenty to thirty arrows with their bows, instead of the two or three habitually carried. The Bashilele, like the Bakongo, are a fine, stalwart race of men. They use a good deal of tukula in the ornamentation of their persons, and their hair is usually carefully dressed in a high topknot—a point in which they differ from the Bakongo, who usually plait their hair closely upon their heads. By nature they are peaceful, and by no means live up to the terrible reputation with which they have been endowed by white men who have never visited their country; but at the same time the Bashilele are born warriors, and any act of aggression on the part of the traveller would be instantly and energetically resented. During our stay at the second village of Makasu, an incident occurred which showed us that the Bashilele are always ready to defend their homes. We were sitting one afternoon in a shed amusing ourselves, and considerably astonishing the natives, with the intellectual pastime of blowing soap bubbles through a straw, when a woman ran up from the fields to the village, shouting and gesticulating wildly as she ran. In a moment the men, who had been occupied at their looms, or sitting smoking in the shade of the palm-trees, had sprung to their feet and rushed inside the stockade, to reappear in a moment or two armed to the teeth, some thrusting bundles of arrows into their girdles, others twisting spare bow-strings round their heads, and all shouting at the top of their voices, many of them giving utterance to the Bashilele war-cry. All the women then began to hurry in from their work in the plantations and sought shelter within the walls, at the same time shouting to the men, and evidently inciting them to attack some enemy whom we had not yet seen. One of our men then came and informed us that a party of Badjok traders were approaching the village, and that the Bashilele had decided to attack them. Hearing an increased commotion upon the farther side of the village, Torday and I hurried round to see what was going on, and, upon turning the corner of the stockade, a truly remarkable sight presented itself. The Bashilele, yelling at the tops of their voices and dancing up and down in a frenzy of excitement, were surrounding three or four of the Badjok, stretching their bows at them, and threatening them with instant death. The Badjok, who consisted of one man, armed with a flintlock gun, and two or three small boys carrying baskets, stood in the midst of their enemies without making the smallest attempt to defend themselves, and without displaying the slightest trace of fear; they did not even appear to be in the very least excited, but stood there, while the Bashilele aimed at them at a distance of only a few feet, as calmly as if they had been in their own village. One small boy had already been seized by the Bashilele and carried off as a prisoner within the stockade. Torday began to inquire what was the cause of this sudden outburst on the part of the people of Makasu, but all that the Bashilele would reply was, “They will set fire to the grass and frighten away the game from our country, so we are going to shoot the whole lot of them.” Torday thereupon attempted to calm down the excitement, and one or two of the older Bashilele who were present cried out to their friends to listen to what he had to say. He remarked that we were very averse to bloodshed, and that he hoped, out of friendship for us, the Bashilele would refrain from any breach of the peace; he told the villagers that should the Badjok attempt to set fire to the grass we ourselves would punish them; and finally, he chaffed the Bashilele warriors for turning out in such force to attack the few small children whom we saw before us. While he was speaking, the Bashilele assumed a less threatening attitude towards the intruders, and when he had finished they accompanied us and the Badjok to our shed to discuss what should be done; but the arrival of another party of Badjok gave rise to a further demonstration on the part of the villagers, and it seemed probable that all our efforts to prevent a massacre would be of no avail. During the whole of these proceedings the Bashilele women never ceased to scream from inside the stockade, and cry out to their warriors to immediately commence hostilities, while one or two of the older women came out of the gates armed with large knives, with the evident intention of despatching any of the Badjok who might not be killed outright. When matters seemed at their worst the chief of Makasu appeared upon the scene for the first time, and, remarking that he alone was chief and intended to be obeyed, he requested his subjects to keep quiet, and to listen to what Torday had to say. Then began a long discussion. The chief pointed out that the Badjok had come into the country uninvited, and would in all probability completely ruin the hunting of the district by carelessly or intentionally setting fire to the grass in the plains, and that this would mean a serious loss of meat to the Bashilele. The leader of the Badjok party (most of which consisted of small boys accompanied by some half-dozen men armed with flintlock guns) then informed us that they came from far away to the southward from Angola, and were engaged in collecting rubber and ivory for sale at the white man’s factories on the upper Kasai, and that, having made their fortunes at this occupation, they would return to their homes. He pointed out that the Bashilele themselves had no use for the rubber (they never sold it to the white man), and that he and his party invariably paid liberal prices for any food-stuffs which they obtained from the local natives; he assured us that all the Badjok were friends of the white man, and that they had no intention of causing any harm to any one. After a good deal of talk on both sides it was finally agreed that the Badjok should be allowed to depart peacefully upon payment of tribute to the chief, and the Bashilele warriors thereupon dispersed to their various occupations as if nothing at all unusual had occurred. Torday remained in the village to make sure that no attempt to follow the strangers should be made, while I escorted the Badjok off the premises, impressing upon them the necessity for extreme care in avoiding an accidental conflagration in the plains, and telling them that should the Bashilele again decide to attack them, we should be powerless to prevent it. Torday expressed his thanks to the Bashilele chief and people for the courteous way in which they had deferred to his wishes when he asked them to abstain from an attack, and he handed them over a sack of salt to be distributed among the people as a present to mark his appreciation of their behaviour. During the whole of that night the Bashilele held a dance of triumph, yelling and singing at the top of their voices, and a couple of hours after sunrise on the following morning this dance was still in progress, although many of the dancers could hardly lift their feet and were streaming with perspiration. Several of our acquaintances in the village completely lost their voices for some days as a result of their singing in celebration of the bloodless victory. And so the incident ended satisfactorily for all concerned—the Badjok had had a very lucky escape; the Bashilele had been prevented from bringing down upon themselves an invasion in such force as would certainly have overwhelmed them had they murdered this small party of Badjok; and we had been able to witness a real war scare among the Bashilele, and to observe how courteous these primitive people are to guests for whom they have conceived a liking. At the first alarm all the male members of the population of over six or seven years old had taken arms, quite small children of about eight being as eager for battle as the grown-up warriors; the women, except for a few who came out to kill the wounded, had all remained behind the stockade, and in their hurried flight from the plantations had hastily concealed in the bush their hoes, baskets, and other belongings which might hinder them in their retreat. As usual our own men behaved with exemplary coolness, and took neither one side nor the other in the dispute when any interference on their part might easily have caused the Bashilele to turn their attentions from the Badjok to ourselves. We had been very much impressed by the coolness of the Badjok during the incident related above, but we were scarcely prepared for the display of audacity which a few of them gave us next morning by calmly turning up at the village of Makasu merely, as they expressed it, to wish us good-day. They absolutely disregarded the presence of the Bashilele, and the latter took no notice of them.

After leaving the second village of Makasu, which we did a few days after the incident alluded to above, no event of any importance occurred during our passage to the Kasai. Up to Makasu we had been able to find very few natives who had ever been so far eastwards as the Black River (as the Bashilele term the Kasai), but now that we were about half-way from the Loange we came across quite a number of people who had been there, and we began to hear of the whereabouts of the Kasai Company’s factories, one of which we hoped to reach when we got to the river bank. As is often the case in the Congo, these factories possessed one name by which the white men and their employees call them, and a totally different one by which they are known to the local natives. It was very difficult, therefore, to ascertain which post it would be best for us to make for of the three which existed. We eventually decided to try to reach Bena Luidi, which lies upon the left bank of the Kasai at its confluence with the Lulua. From Makasu we proceeded to a village named Kitambi, where we met with the same friendly reception that had been accorded us at both the Bashilele villages in which we had stayed. We were particularly struck with the gentlemanly bearing of all the Bashilele chiefs with whom we came in contact. They were just as dignified as their kinsmen the Bushongo, but they appeared to be more manly and lack the blasé swaggering manner of such men as Isambula N’Genga, the chief of Misumba. The old chief of Kitambi showed us every possible consideration. One evening Torday and I had been out to shoot some guinea-fowl, and upon returning to the village we were met by the chief, who inquired if we had heard any shouting in the village during our absence, and said that he would like to assure us that the disturbances which had arisen were entirely between his own subjects, and did not in any way concern our men. He told us this that we might not imagine that our people had disobeyed our instructions to behave peacefully in the village, and also that we, his guests, should not be in any way put out by the trouble, which was of a purely domestic nature (in fact, divorce proceedings of a somewhat stormy character).

We spent several days in Kitambi, and by dint of dosing the natives for various minor complaints we contrived to make ourselves so popular that they were quite unwilling to let us proceed upon our way, and it was not until Torday had resorted to the device of playing upon the feelings of the women, saying that he was most anxious to reach his home in order to see his family, from whom he had been separated for many years, that we were able to persuade the people to carry our loads, and thus permit us to depart from their midst. Just before leaving Kitambi a small party of Badjok appeared in the village, having been sent to visit us by their chief, who lived some two days’ journey to the south, to request us to stay in his village, and to say that if we decided to pass that way his people would convey our loads to the Kasai. We therefore started off to the village of this chief Mayila, passing one night in a Bashilele hamlet on the way. Upon arriving at Mayila’s village we discovered that it was more or less of a temporary one, being the most northerly settlement of the Badjok, who have in considerable numbers moved out of Angola into Congo territory, in order to collect rubber in districts like the Bashilele country, where the local natives do not trade in that commodity, and hunt elephants and sell the ivory and rubber thus obtained to the neighbouring factories of the Kasai Company. Having spent a few years in thus amassing a fortune, the Badjok return to Angola where spirituous liquors are permitted to be sold to the natives, and waste their substance in riotous living. So keen are these people to trade with the white man that I do not believe they possess one single article which they would not sell, but the prices they demand are so extremely high that during our stay with them we were not able to make very extensive purchases for the Museum. As an instance of their enthusiasm to trade, I may mention that one of these people suggested to us in all seriousness that he should accompany us to Europe, bringing with him his rubber and ivory, and thus save the middleman’s profit, which he was astute enough to know must be made by the trading companies in Africa. The Badjok are a truly remarkable people. Under-sized and dirty, there is nothing picturesque about them, but being born warriors and possessing absolutely no sense of fear, they have in the past migrated from the south, conquering tribe after tribe with which they came in contact; in fact, only one race of the south-western Congo, the Babunda, has fairly defeated them on the field of battle. Nowadays the presence of European authority had stemmed the tide of the Badjok invasion, and although these people, had they decided to take up arms against the white man, could have rendered the occupation of the upper Kasai extremely difficult, their enthusiasm for trade has led them to realise that fortunes were to be made in commerce with the white man, and they accordingly became his friends. They are the only tribe with whom we came into contact who habitually hunt elephants for their ivory. Their method for doing so is as follows: Armed with flintlock guns (it is curious that although they are wealthy the Badjok prefer to use the cheapest variety of “gaspipe” that is sold in the Kasai), a party of half-a-dozen hunters proceed to the various swamps in search of elephants. Upon finding an animal carrying a good pair of tusks, two of the Badjok fire together at his head, usually bringing him to his knees. These two then run away and hastily reload their guns, while two more shoot simultaneously at the animal’s head and also retire to reload, leaving the remaining two to take their shots and then run away. By the time the third pair of Badjok have discharged their guns the first pair have reloaded and are ready to shoot again, and in this way a continuous fusillade is kept up until the unfortunate elephant is dead. Although the Badjok were very friendly to us, our stay in their village was not particularly comfortable. We were neither of us in very good health, Torday having suffered from toothache for some weeks, and I having broken a bone in my hand some months before at the Mushenge, which I had never been able to have set, and which was a constant cause of worry to me. We were therefore in need of as much rest as the conditions of our life would allow, but in the Badjok village sleep was almost out of the question, for all through the night the people would keep up an animated conversation at the top of their voices, each one remaining in his house and shouting to his friends at the other side of the village. Dances, too, with their inevitable accompaniment of tom-toms, were very frequently held, and always appeared to take place as near as possible to our tents just as we were hoping to get to sleep. Old Mayila, their chief, must have been nearly eighty years of age; in his younger days he had travelled (possibly as a slave raider) very extensively, and knew practically the whole of the country between Lake Tanganyika and St. Paul de Loanda on the west coast. Torday was able to check his veracity when he told us this, for he himself knows the country about Tanganyika, and also round the Portuguese frontier by the upper waters of the Kwilu, and he told me that the old chief knew the name of every stream and village which he mentioned to him. The old man was quite an amusing character. He induced his warriors to hold a dance in our honour, in the course of which a good deal of powder was squibbed off from the old flintlock guns, and at the conclusion of the dance Torday produced a present of gunpowder and requested the chief to distribute it among the performers. “I will keep it for them,” replied the old fellow, hastily carrying it off to his hut, and, despite the angry protestations of those for whom the present was intended, not one of them got so much as a single load from those canisters. Old Mayila was extremely fond of liquid refreshment, and he would always contrive to be present when I took my daily drink of whisky before supper. He did not hesitate to ask for some, and at last grew so importunate that I was compelled to take my grog in the privacy of my tent, pretending that our supply was finished. Although Mayila had promised that his people should carry our loads to the Kasai, we soon discovered that he had in reality induced us to visit him in the hope of being able to sell us rubber, and when he found that we would not purchase any of that commodity he declined to use his influence to persuade his subjects to carry for us. No one was in the least anxious to act as a carrier, for the Badjok told us plainly that they could make a better profit by spending their time in collecting rubber and in hunting elephants than in accompanying us to the Kasai. Although this delayed us some days it did not seriously inconvenience us, for we persuaded a native to convey a letter to the white man’s factory of Bena Luidi, and the Kasai Company’s agent there sent his own workmen to bring on our loads to his post. Two very long days’ marching sufficed to take us to the river after spending about two months in the unknown country.

Although the distance, as the crow flies, from the Loange to the Kasai is only about eighty miles, we were pleased at having performed a journey which we had been assured was quite impossible. By discovering that the country consists, for the most part, of grassy uplands and not of impenetrable forest, we had cleared up the doubts which had existed as to its nature; Torday had been able to confirm his theories as to the relationship between its inhabitants and the Bushongo, thus adding very considerably to the value of his researches among the latter people, and we had shown that, with careful handling, the Bakongo and Bashilele are by no means so hostile to the white man as we had been led to believe. We were particularly pleased that, contrary to the predictions of Europeans, we had been able to carry out our project without employing an armed force and without having to fire a single shot in anger. It is true that we have never been able to see the great chief Goman Vula, but, as I have shown, the means at our disposal were not sufficient to enable us to bribe the Bakongo into leading us to his village. As an instance of how false reports gain credence in this part of Africa, I may mention that our safe arrival on the banks of the Kasai occasioned no little surprise among the traders and the captains of the steamers which plied upon that river, for a rumour had been circulated that the whole of our party had been massacred, and we ourselves had been eaten by the Bakongo!

I do not know how this story originated, especially as the Bakongo are not, and never have been, cannibals, but I imagine that the white men who considered that we were running a great risk in going into the unexplored country must, in the absence of news from us, have begun to fear that we had been murdered, and no doubt each time these fears were expressed something was added to them, and in this way what was considered a possibility rapidly grew into a fact. However it may have arisen, we found that the rumour had actually reached the coast, and furthermore, that a Belgian trader, on his way home to Europe, had informed Messrs. Hatton and Cookson’s agent at Boma that he should proceed to England to break the news of my death to my parents! It was fortunate that he did not do so, for I have no doubt that by the time he had reached my home he would have imagined that he himself had been an eyewitness of the massacre which he might have described, together with details of the cannibal feast which followed. With our arrival at Bena Luidi our wanderings in the Kasai came practically to an end, for we descended the river to Dima as soon as a steamer arrived on its way down stream from Luebo, and thence hastened on to the coast to catch a vessel which should bear us homeward after an absence of two years.

Although we had experienced some few hardships, and the climate of the forest has probably left its mark permanently upon our constitutions, we were not displeased with our work, for we had been able to amass a great number of objects for the British Museum, and we had tried our best to turn to good advantage the opportunities we had enjoyed of studying the primitive African negro before he has been materially changed by contact with the European—opportunities which, as the white man’s influence spreads over the heart of the Dark Continent, must become rarer and more rare until the not far distant day arrives when the African native in his savage state exists no more.