Nov, 26, 1904.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
ill 
As It Is in Africa* 
Our destination was 75 miles northeast of Monrovia 
by a straight line, but the circuitous route which we 
were compelled to take made the distance 100 miles. 
This distance will not seem great in a country where 
the inhabitants enjoy facilities of travel, but in a coun- 
try where the substitutes for railroads, electric cars, 
stages, beasts of burden, and all other means of mod- 
ern travel are human beings, it is considerable to the 
traveler, who is compelled either to walk or to be 
carried in a hammock. 
The traveler who travels by hammock finds himself 
swinging to and fro, suspended from a horizontal bar 
whose ends rest on the shoulders of two stalwart na- 
tives, who rush him at breakneck speed through narrow 
and uneven paths, over dangerous ravines and huge 
logs which block the way. Sometimes the unequal 
height of the carriers occasions much suffering to the 
victim, which the native enjoys richly. 
The absence of railroads and of every other vehicular 
convenience for travel in Liberia is a serious drawback 
to the development and prosperity of the Republic. 
For this reason very few Liberians venture into the in- 
terior. Except soldiers and traders, the Liberians are 
absolutely ignorant of the interior of their country. They 
prefer to go to Europe for pleasure and recreation, al- 
though the interior of Libera is said to be rich in prod- 
ucts, beautiful in scenery, and healthful in location. Only 
the foreigner ventures. Because of his willingness to 
assume the difficulties of the journey he becomes at 
once the object of curious wonder. 
Our party consisted of T. R. McWilliams, professor 
of science in the College of West Africa, as scientist; 
E. Harrison Lyon, as photographer; Mr. Zacihus Ken- 
nedy, a Liberian road commissioner; a botanist; a 
student of native customs; and nine natives to carj-y 
food and luggage, making fifteen persons in all. Sev- 
eral rare specimens of flora and fauna were collected, 
and many interesting pictures were taken of the chiefs 
and their people. 
We left Monrovia April 28. The route took us up 
to the head of the St. Paul River and thence to Harris- 
burg, the base of operations for Dobblee's Island. 
Here we calculated upon securing a sufficient number 
of natives to accompany us as carriers; but this being 
the season for planting, we found it impossible to hire 
anyone, and were compelled to walk to and from Kpon- 
dia Hill, a distance of more than 200 miles. 
After leaving Harrisburg, a Liberian town inhabited 
by civilized people, we found no roads entitled to be 
called such leading into the interior, either to or from 
native towns. They are all crooked and labyrinthine. 
They are made crooked to mislead the enemy, and to 
render his approach to a town difficult during a tribal 
war. The aborigines give themselves no concern about 
obstacles in the road. They cut down a tree and leave 
part of the huge branches lying across the path. They 
never think of removing them except when compelled 
to do so by a Liberian commissioner. They prefer 
either to climb over or to go around, and to swim a 
creek rather than to take the trouble to cross_ it by the 
bridge. When an old road is abandoned, it is flagged 
by placing a branch as an obstruction at the fork of 
the path. The native knows what this means and takes 
the new road. The "reason given by the natives for 
leaving obstructions in the road, and for making them 
narrow and winding, is not only to bewilder the tribal 
foe, but also to render it difficult for the Americo-Li- 
berian to find them in their native fastnesses. 
The way to Kpondia Hill lies through 37 native towns 
and half towns, having each from 100 to 600 inhabitants. 
They are built largely in the midst of dense forests or 
upon the top of steep hills. The distance from one 
native town to another of the same tribe hardly ever 
exceeds three miles, and the population is never more 
than 2.000. The houses are constructed of mud and 
thatch. No marked improvement is visible in this sec- 
tion on the primitive style of house builders. The in- 
teriors of the houses are clean, and so are many of the 
towns. Although a goodly number of the men in these 
towns speak and understand English, some few reading 
and writing it with astonishing accuracy, the know- 
ledge does not make any difference in their mode of 
living, climatic conditions and social environments 
force them to a strict adherence to primitive customs. 
The municipal officer of every town is styled the chief, 
and of the half town, the headman. All disputes are 
settled by them. 
We arrived at Tecker Town in time to witness the 
burial ceremonies over the remains of the King's daugh- 
ter, who had died three days previously. Her death 
was evidently occasioned by physical exhaustion. She 
undertook a journey of 40 miles three days after be- 
coming a mother. Her relatives, however, concluded 
that her somewhat sudden death was due to witchcraft, 
and the whole town accordingly set about finding the 
witch. The memory of the death was honored by the 
customary dance, which consisted of hideous yells and 
physical contortions, leaving the women in a state of 
exhaustion and the men in a state of frenzy. The cere- 
mony closed with repeated volleys from firearms, to an- 
nounce to the spirits on the other side the coming of 
the departed. Upon the grave was left a brass kettle, 
some of the wearing apparel of the deceased, and some 
articles of food. 
To discover the 'witch, the suspected party was forced 
to swallow poison made from the sassy-wood bark. 
According to the theory, the guilty cannot live with a 
dose of this concotion, but upon the innocent it will 
have no effect. Many innocent persons have been the 
victims of this superstition, until recently an antidote 
has been discovered, which the suspects carry concealed. 
Kpondia Hill rises abruptly about 600 feet above the 
surrounding country, which gives the traveler a mag- 
nificent and picturesque view of rolling hills, fertile val- 
leys, and verdant plains, through which meander heath- 
lul streams, wherein fish and game abound. 
The King received us kindly, and gave us his house, 
which was an improvement on the surrounding huts. 
He is himself a tall, spare, but well built man, with keen 
eyes and sharp features, rather dignified, and good 
looking. The flat nose, thick lips, and big teeth the 
native African is frequently represented as possessing 
are no part of the features of this man, and his people 
partake of the same even and intelligent profiles. The 
usual picture does injustice to the native Africans in 
Liberia. 
The next and most important step before retiring is 
to "dash" the King until "his heart lies down"— -an 
aboriginal expression which signifies satisfaction. The 
dash, which is equivalent to a tip, consisted of a piece 
of white cloth, tobacco, pipes, salt and matches. 
The traveler would conclude from appearance that 
Africa must be a land of warriors. Every man appears 
as a warrior. He seems to live always in. the fear of 
the enemy and in the shadow of the great evil, which 
prompts him to go armed from head to foot. With 
his sword he defends himself from the enemy, and with 
his charms he protects himself from the evil. His arms, 
which are a part of his dress, consist of a short sword, 
a country knife, a spear, and a bow and arrow, which 
he uses with great precision. It is of frequent occur- 
rence for boys between the ages of 8 and 9 years to 
stick a piece of chip about an inch and a half in width 
in the ground or on the limb of a tree and, at a distance 
of 200 feet, to split it in halves with the arrows from 
their bows. 
The country knife is indispensable to the native. It 
is his most effective weapon of defense. With it he 
can successfully meet the attacks of the boa constrictor 
and many of the ravenous beasts and poisonous reptiles, 
of which he has but little fear. The only animal 
which he seems to fear is the baboon. He will en- 
trap an elephant, chase a leopard, and pursue a hip- 
popotamus, but he will fly in mad haste from the 
hideous yells of a baboon, which resemble the cry of a 
man in distress. This sound unnerves him, and despite his 
reputation for courage, he will desert you in the densest 
forest. Our party had an illustration of this during the 
trip. When in the midst of a thick bush, ten miles 
away from any settlement, we heard this doleful noise, 
which we mistook for the cry of distress of perhaps 
some misguided traveler. The natives came to a halt. 
They knew what it was, and in their discomfiture 
started to leave us in the thickest forest, but the sud- 
den discharge of our fire-arms brought them to their 
senses. 
Continual tribal wars in the interior have resulted in 
the depopulation of whole sections and in the exter- 
mination of thousands of families. Africa is the most 
thinly populated of the continents, there being only 
thirteen persons to the square mile. Liberia is never 
without tribal wars. The natives are always fighting, 
to the detriment of the country. Gold, ivory and cattle 
which formerly came to the markets of Monrovia have 
been diverted into other directions because of better 
protection to life and property. This fact contributes 
to the scarcity of fresh meat at the capital. 
Women are invariably the cause of every contention. 
Wealth among the aborigines is based solely on the 
number of wives, boys and cattle possessed. The man 
who has the most wives can easily be king. The ab- 
duction of one of the wives of a Pessy man, and the 
refusal to give her up when demand is made, is casus 
belli. The men of a captured town are frequently put 
to death in the most cruel manner, while the women 
and children are reduced to abject bondage. Of these 
the king takes the lion's share, and distributes the re- 
mainder among his followers. The children are fre- 
quently sold, pawned, or given to satisfy financial de- 
mands, very often among themselves, or to members of 
neighboring tribes, or sometimes to Liberians. who pay 
the price for them, and then keep them under the ap- 
prentice system until they reach maturity, when they 
are given their liberty, if they do not abscond in the 
meantime. 
The social life of the interior has a degenerating 
tendency on the morals of the foreigner also. Illustra- 
tions in social and moral degeneracy are numerous 
among white and black foreigners. These victims have 
not been confined to the secular life, but have been 
found in the religious life also. Men and women who 
came to teach and to lift up have been found among 
the victims not merely of heathenism but of wanton 
immorality. 
Currency is absent from this section. The natives 
bring their products — coffee, palm oil, palm kernels, 
palm wine, kasada, starch, piassava, ivory, skins, veni- 
son, camwood, rubber, beeswax, honey, gold, precious 
stones, sheep, goats, cattle, ginger, kola nuts, and other 
things — and for these they get from the merchant cloth, 
salt, tobacco, pipes, gin, cutlasses, brass kettles, iron 
pots, trinkets, beads, handkerchiefs, powder, caps. shot, 
stockfish, looking glasses, combs, Florida water, and 
other commodities, all of which are sold at large profit. 
For instance, cloth purchased in England at three to 
five cents a yard is sold in trade for twenty-four cents. 
A Talk to Foys. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I had a good illustration the other day of how some 
boys — and the practice is not altogether confined to boys 
— handle their guns. I first noticed the boys while they 
were shooting at some birds; only shooting at them, 
though — they were not hitting any of them. Had they 
been men, 1 would not have let them even shoot at them, 
for the birds were protected ones and were on posted 
ground, also. I let the boys shoot away; I did not ex- 
pect to see them hit anything, and they did not. After 
they had kept it up half an hour and had crawled all oyer 
the place on their hands and knees, the birds. left and the 
boys started to go home. Then I interviewed them. 
There were four of them, three with guns and one to 
carry the game if they had got any to carry. The oldest 
boy had his gun under his arm, with the muzzle pointing 
right at the next boy in front of him, and had the ham- 
mer down on top of the cap. I had seen a few guns like 
his before, and examined it. It, was an old musket, and 
bore the legend "U. S. Harper's Ferry, 1855." It had 
been at one time a flintlock, but had been altered to per- 
cussion, and the place where the pan had been was now 
plugged up with brass, They were about as dangerous 
at the breech as at the muzzle when I had one of them. 
I carried mine up to the Peninsula in 1861, when we went 
there to take Richmond, but did not take it just then,_ I 
did not carry it long, though; the first time I found a rifle 
whose owner had been shot I exchanged my musket fof 
that. I raised the boy's hammer to half-cock, then tried 
it to see if it could be pulled Off at half-cock; some of 
them can; but this one could not. 
"This is a fine gun," I told its owner, "but it is out of 
place here. It should be up in the museum. Now, after 
this don't let me ever catch you carrying it with that 
hammer down. Keep it as it is now, and quit pointing 
it at a boy's head. Point it down. If you should happen 
to let the gun fall with the hammer the way you had it 
just now, some one would get shot. And take that cap 
off before you put the gun away." He took it off there 
and then. 
"What have you in the gun?" I asked. 
He took a small bottle out of his pocket that was half 
full of No. 6 shot. 
"That is large enough for ducks. Had you hit one of 
these birds with a dose of that there would not have been 
enough of the bird left to pick up." 
Two of the small boys had Flobert rifles, both of them 
loaded. "Do you leave the loads in?" I asked. Yes, they 
left them in for the next time. "Well, get them out now 
and keep them out until you want to use the gun again. 
Suppose your mother or sister should pick up that gun, 
not knowing it was loaded, what would happen? Or sup- 
pose a baby got hold of it and shot himself?" 
They had not thought of that. "Yes, I know you did 
not; and a good many others don't think of it. That is 
how we get shot with a gun that we don't know is loaded. 
Now think of it after this. And another thing, let these 
birds here alone j ust now ; wait for the open season ; and 
in the meantime shoot English sparrows. I let you boys 
shoot at the birds to-day because I knew you could not 
hit them. Had you killed one of them I could have made 
it cost your father just $7.40. I would not do it, of course, 
after I had let you keep on shooting and had not stopped 
you." 
"I was going to quit as soon as I saw you," the big boy 
said, "but these boys told me that you did not care if we 
did shoot them." 
"Yes, I care. Don't shoot any more of them, though." 
One of the small boys wanted to know if he might not 
shoot crows. "Oh, yes, you can shoot at them. All the 
crows you shoot with a Flobert rifle, though, won't de- 
populate that crow colony very much. The crows get up 
at daylight here, and they know a boy and a gun when 
they see him. You won't shoot many of them." 
Cabia Blanco. 
Massachusetts Game. 
New Bedford, Mass., Nov. 14. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: Our season opened on all game in our county of 
Bristol on November 1. Woodcock were never more 
numerous than at this season, but on the second day not 
any were to be found, as the ground froze up solid and 
they went off south. Quail are very scarce; the severe 
cold weather of last winter had much to do with this 
year's crop. Partridges are fairly plentiful, and wintered 
well. Rabbits and hares are thick and the woods are full 
of gray and red squirrels. Foxes are very plentiful, and 
while very few have been killed this fall, the hunters have 
no trouble to go out and start two or three in a day's 
hunt. I think they have as much to do about the scarcity 
of quail as the cold winters do. The game wardens are 
after law breakers, and arrested and convicted a father 
and son for shooting and having quail in their possession 
before the first day of November. They were fined $20 
each in the District Court, and were let off easy. There, 
is plenty of work here for the wardens to do, as the 
market-hunters and market men both need looking after. 
Constant Reader. 
Birds of British Columbia. 
The Provincial Museum of Victoria, B. C, has recently 
published a Catalogue of British Columbia Birds, com- 
piled by Mr. Francis Kermode, the museum's curator. 
It is an interesting paper, but, we may assume, contains 
only a portion of the birds of that great Province, which 
holds within its borders alike mountain and plain, foggy 
seashore and deep, hot, dry valley. Such a territory, ex- 
tending from the seacoast to the crest of the continent's 
backbone, and from the Straits of Fuca nearly to the 
Arctic, has room within its borders for many forms of 
life. Over much of the Province little collecting has 
been done, and further search will undoubtedly consid- 
erably enlarge this list, which has grown from 339 
species and sub-species noted in the list of 1898, pre- 
pared by the late John Fannin, to 362, the present num - 
ber. 
The notes are briefly annotated, and the localities given 
where the species have been taken. The publication is a 
Aery useful one, and Mr. Kermode deserves thanks for 
the pains taken with it. 
The Woodcock's Whistle. 
Buffalo, N. Y., Nov. 6.- — Editor Forest and Stream: 
Please tell George L. Brown I'd like to shake his hand for 
his interesting dissertation on "The Bird That Passes in 
the Night." Pie evidently appreciates the little brown 
wizard as thoroughly as I do. 
Apropos of the woodcock's whistle, it may interest some 
of your readers who have followed the discussion . in 
Forest and . Stream's pages to hear the little evidence. 
I can offer. A few days ago I shot a cock which my 
good old Dan brought to me very much alive. In taking - 
the bird from the dog's mouth, I grasped it by the bill, 
and imagine my astonishment when, as the dog released : 
it, the bird fluttered its wings rapidly and produced the 
familiar whistle. I know that while this occurred the bill 
was held tightly shut by my hand. 
I do not offer the above as conclusive evidence that the 
sound is made by the bird's wings, but in my own mind 
i feel very sure that such is the case. 
KBWard A. Eames. 
4 * * The current number of Gatne Laws in Brief g«Wf 
lam of oil States end Provinces. Price 3$ cents, 
