THE SOKO. 609 



dog-mouth ; the teeth are slightly human, but the canines show 

 the beast by their large development. The hands, or rather the 

 fingers, are like those of the natives. The flesh of the feet is 

 yellow, and the eagerness with which the Manyuema devour it 

 leaves the impression that eating sokos was the first stage by 

 which they arrived at being cannibals ; they say the flesh is 

 delicious. The soko is represented to be extremely knowing, 

 successfully stalking men and women while at their work, kid- 

 napping children, and running up trees with them — he seems 

 to be amused by the sight of the young native in his arms, but 

 comes down when tempted by a bunch of bananas, and as he 

 lifts that, drops the child : the young soko in such a case would 

 cling closely to the armpit of the elder. One man was cutting 

 out honey from a tree, and naked, when a soko suddenly ap- , 

 peared and caught him, then let him go : another man was 

 hunting, and missed in his attempt to stab a soko : it seized the 

 spear and broke it, then grappled with the man, who called to 

 his companions, "Soko has caught me," the soko bit off the 

 ends of his fingers and escaped unharmed. Both men a^je now 

 alive at Bambarre. 



" The soko is so cunning, and has such sharp eyes, that no one 

 can stalk him in front without being seen, hence, when shot, it 

 is always in the back ; when surrounded by men and nets, he is 

 generally speared in the back too. Otherwise he is not a very 

 formidable beast : he is nothing, as compared in power of dam- 

 aging his assailant, to a leopard or lion, but is more like a man 

 unarmed, for it does not occur to him to use his canine teeth, 

 which are long and formidable. Numbers of them come down 

 in the forest, within a hundred yards of our camp, and would 

 be unknown but for giving tongue like fox-hounds : this is their 

 nearest approach to speech. A man hoeing was stalked by a 

 soko, and seized ; he roared out, but the soko giggled and 

 grinned, and left him as if he had done it in play. A child 

 caught up by a soko is often abused by being pinched and 

 scratched, and let fall. One of these animals is not unfre- 

 quently known to kill leopards, by seizing both paws and biting 

 them off so as to disable them ; he then goes up into a tree and 

 groans over his wounds, and sometimes recovers, while the 

 leopard dies. At other times he pays for life of the leopard 



