and the former ran to fetch his diary.
"Look here," he said, pointing to one of the last entries, "I have already, during the years I have spent in this benighted country, eaten 9863 chickens. Schomburgk has probably eaten pro rata at least as many"—the major nodded—"and now you give us two more as a treat! O Lord!"
I joined in their laughter then. I had to. And, after all, my little dinner passed off excellently well, for of course there were other dishes. Meanwhile I had learnt one more African lesson. Never, never, NEVER offer your guests chicken if there is anything else under the sun obtainable by hook or by crook. Cheese and crackers, if you like; or tinned salmon, or sardines, or even "bully" beef. But the domestic fowl, regarded as more or less of a luxury in Europe, is in Africa absolutely tabu. It is the one article of flesh diet that is all-pervading everywhere out there, and which everybody consequently soon heartily sickens of. As well might one offer a dish of salmon to an Alaskan fisherman; or a ragout of mutton to an Australian boundary rider.
Another lesson I learnt during my long and wearisome illness was never to kill a lizard, the reason being that lizards eat insects, and insects of innumerable and most diverse kinds constitute the principal pests of equatorial Africa. The houses out there swarm with lizards, and they are big ones too, fully eighteen inches or more in length. Nobody dreams of interfering with them. On the contrary, they are everywhere petted and made much of. One old fellow I got quite attached to, and he to me. I always knew him from the others because he had only three legs, having lost the other, probably in an encounter with one of his kind. He was as good as a watch. I used to call him my tea-time lizard, because he always put in an appearance precisely at four o'clock every afternoon.
Schomburgk used to tell me that every lizard was responsible for killing and eating I don't know how many hundreds—or was it thousands?—of white ants daily. Very likely. But all the same the ants did not seem to me to diminish perceptibly. The venomous and vicious little pests swarmed everywhere in incredible numbers. Nothing seemed to come amiss to them. Our operator declared that he once found a lot of them trying to make a meal off a sixteen-pound cannon-ball that he used as a make-weight to the tripod of his machine to prevent it being blown or knocked over, but this I altogether decline to believe. He must have been—well, mistaken. But I can vouch from bitter personal experience that they will devour, in the course of a single night, photographs hung on the walls, and boots left standing on the floor; and once a detachment of them riddled so badly a strong wooden box in which I kept my letters and papers that it fell to pieces in my hands.
Another troublesome insect pest was a kind of big wood-boring beetle, that made its home chiefly in the beams of the roof. These he would riddle so completely that sooner or later the thatch was practically certain to come tumbling about one's ears. While in between whiles he peppered the interior with sawdust from his carpentering operations to such an extent that I was kept continually busy dusting and sweeping it out.
Later, however, when we trekked further up-country right into the real heart of the unexplored hinterland, I learnt that Africa held other even worse insect pests than white ants and wood-boring beetles. But of these more anon.
CHAPTER III
LIFE AT KAMINA
There seems to be no end to trouble when filming cinema plays in equatorial Africa. No sooner had I recovered from my bout of malarial fever than our leader and producer, Major Schomburgk, was stricken down with it, and everything was at sixes and sevens once more.
However, I employed my interval of enforced leisure in making my temporary home as comfortable as possible, and in getting acquainted with the natives, and so managed to pass the time pleasantly and profitably enough.
My nicest hours were those spent before my hut between four o'clock and dark, after the day's work was done. Then I took my tea, and passed the time of day with the women and girls who came with huge calabashes on their heads to get water.
At first they used to hurry by shyly, with eyes downcast, and without speaking. But I laughed and smiled at them, and by degrees, after the first day or two, we became quite friendly. They were chiefly interested in my needlework and my hair. Then one day a thunderstorm broke suddenly while they were near, and I invited them into my hut for shelter and set my gramophone playing. This delighted them immensely, although for a long while they seemed to be more or less frightened of it.
There are some sweet girls amongst them, and many of them are quite modest in their demeanour, and well-behaved, although in the matter of clothes, of course, they have not much to boast of. The young unmarried girls are some of them quite pretty, with lithe graceful figures, beautifully proportioned busts, and well-shaped arms and shoulders.
All of them have to work hard, however, and the existence of the married women especially seemed to me to be one continuous round of drudgery. In fact, the daily life of a native wife out here might well serve the advanced suffragettes at home as a typical, "terrible example" of what my sex has to put up with from "tyrant man."
She has to rise at dawn, sweep out the homestead, fetch water from the river, often far away, do the scanty family washing, tread out the corn, grind it to flour and make it into porridge, gather and prepare for food various wild roots, herbs, and vegetables, cook the family meals, wash and tend the children, and perform a hundred and one other similar duties, while her lord and master is, for the most part, quietly resting "in the shade of the sheltering palm."
Nevertheless, I am bound to say that the women do not appear to mind it, but seem, on the contrary, to be quite happy and contented. And indeed their lives compare very favourably on the whole with the lives led by many married women of the lower classes in the great cities of England, Germany, and elsewhere.
The native husband is, as a rule, of a good-natured and kindly disposition, tolerant to a fault almost, and passionately fond of his children. Domestic quarrels are rare, and "nagging" on the part of the wife—that great source of strife amongst the lower classes in Europe—is practically unknown in Africa. Then, again, if there are no palaces in Togoland, there are likewise no slums. Everybody is well housed, according to native standards, and they have plenty to eat. The children especially are well looked after in this latter respect. There is no "under feeding" of them, at all events, and a Togo mother would probably regard as an insult any offer on the part of the State to provide "free meals" for her offspring.
The worst class of natives to get along with are those who have been brought continually into association with Europeans, and have acquired thereby an exaggerated notion of their own importance. Our chief interpreter, for instance, required at first a good deal of keeping in his place, although his views on life and things in general used to afford me considerable amusement.
By permission of
Maj. H. Schomburgk, F.R.G.S.
Cinema Acting in the Wilds
The authoress is here shown playing a part in a cinema drama, "The White Goddess of the Wangora." The big trunk in the background is that of a very large "cotton tree," regarded as sacred by the natives. The small tree in the foreground, against which she is leaning, is a pawpaw, valued for its refreshing fruit.
One day, for instance, seeing me rather downcast—it was when I was recovering from my illness—he surprised me by offering to sing to me. I thanked him, and told him to get on with it, expecting to hear some ordinary tuneless native ditty. Instead, he greatly astonished me by singing, in a fairly passable voice, some very nice songs in German.
I complimented him, and asked him where he had learnt them. He said, "At the Catholic Mission." Then he went on to inquire whether I had a mother still living, and on my answering him in the affirmative, he remarked: "I, too, have a mother, a dear good woman, and twenty-five brothers and sisters."
I suppose I looked the astonishment