192 WILD LIFE UNDER THE EQUATOR. 
populated ; those who are not killed desert their villages 
to seek safety in some remote and unknown spot of the 
forest where they think they may be safer; hence very 
often I felt quite astonished to meet little villages far 
off. Many of their villages are palisaded, and their dogs 
keep watch. 
Yes, among such people I have lived for a long time 
when there was war in the country, and I never knew if 
by mistake they might not kill me. 
Now I have given you a slight idea of these warlike 
and treacherous Bakalai. I am happy to say that on the 
right bank of the Ovenga Quengueza has succeeded in 
preventing these wild men from making war upon each 
other’s*villages. 
We have come to shoot wild boar. It is the season 
when they are very fat, for we are in the month of March, 
and I tell you these wild boars of Equatorial Africa are 
glorious eating, and are magnificent beasts to bag. 
Do not think they look like the wild boars they have 
in Kurope. Nothing of the kind. It is no easy matter 
to come near enough to have a shot at these wild beasts, 
for they are exceedingly shy. 
Night came, and my fellows were so afraid of evil 
spirits that they kept tremendous fires and kept talking 
all night, and when daylight came they felt so tired that 
they all went to sleep. This will never do,I said to 
myself, for if a man does not sleep at night he certainly 
can not work hard in the day. 
After they awoke they came in a body, friend Malaou- 
en leading, saying that we had better go and make our 
camp far away in the forest, for the place where we were 
was not good at all. I thought some of thém might get 
