Wambuba Cannibals 



fly. Illustrating the accuracy of the drum code the following 

 instance is worth recording. 



On this occasion news was received at the mission by 

 drum that a white man was approaching from a certain 

 direction, but as one of their members had lately left to travel 

 the same route and news had already been received respecting 

 his arrival at a certain village, the Fathers placed little credence 

 in the report, judging the natives had become mixed up with 

 the message and that it referred to their friend who had 

 recently left. However, the native signaller persisted in his 

 report that there were two white men, one going and one 

 coming on the same road. To prove the reliability of the 

 native code sure enough the reported white man turned up 

 at the mission the following day. This one instance is suffi- 

 cient to show how useful this method of signalling might be 

 in case of sickness, for instance, or a native rising.* 



On such an expedition as I have attempted to describe 

 in this book, the study of the flora, fauna and topography 

 in which I was most interested, are no less absorbing than 

 the extraordinary variety of the beliefs, customs and super- 

 stitions of the many savage races through whose country 

 I travelled and to which, through lack of time, I was only 

 able to give but a passing interest. With the forest region — 

 for the practice of its worst forms is confined to forest dwellers 

 — we were in touch for the first time with cannibalism, with- 

 out a reference to which a book of travel on the Congo could 

 hardly be considered complete, it having played such a large 

 part in its history. 



As we had passed by the Bahuni country and were amongst 



* This system of drum-signalling extends over the whole of the Congo basin, 

 as well as to northern Angola and the Cameroons, and reappears in Southern 

 Nigeria and much of forested West Africa. — H. H.J. 



169 



