Chapter X · (continued 2)
Ellen E. (Ellen Elizabeth) Frewer translation
Dainties more tempting and recherché were brought in gourd-shells. The natives who brought these alone formed a goodly company, consisting chiefly of boys and children; the women, being shy, and also jealously guarded by their husbands, remained behind at home.
I must not omit to mention the vegetables, which, when circumstances permitted, were also brought for the bearers. These vegetables, served with sauces, were arranged in hundreds of gourd-shells, pots, and bowls, round the immense pile of the so-called bread. The sauces, which were greatly relished by the Bongo, consisted of a compound of animal and vegetable grease, water, soda, and aromatic herbs. The chief ingredients in the finer sorts were grains of sesame and hyptis, pounded to a pulp, whilst the inferior kinds were mainly composed of the Zawa-oil of the Lophira alata and oil of termites. Those with the most piquant flavour are made of dried fish, which is pounded and rolled into balls like cheese; in consequence of the heat of the climate these very soon acquire a haut goût. Neither Bongo nor Niam-niam will touch pimento, as they consider its very pungency to be an evidence of its poisonous properties; consequently they seek a substitute in stinking fermented matter.
Common salt is absolutely unknown in this part of Africa; the only salt to be procured being extracted from the ashes of the wood of the Grewia; consequently the greasy soups when boiled coagulate almost into a kind of soap, and their flavour may be more easily imagined than described. To make specially attractive sauces there is added the flesh of elephants and buffaloes, which has been previously dried and pounded. Any fat from meat is all but unknown: Nature appears to have quite denied any supply to animals that are wild, and the Niam-niam have no domestic animals like their neighbours; whilst the fat of dogs and men, even if it were not loathsome to the Bongo, would be far too rare and costly to be used for such a purpose. Such is the usual food supplied to the native bearers, and according to their notion it is probable that no more grateful diet could be prescribed.
VEGETABLES.
At some seasons other products of the soil, such as the larger kinds of gourds, are added to the catalogue of supplies. Gourd-leaves, too, which can be gathered throughout the year, together with various herbs, which are found neither to be unwholesome nor to have the flavour of pimento, are pounded and mixed with the soups. Vegetables proper are rarely grown, but whatever weeds may spring up on all cultivated soils are employed as a substitute, and play as important a part in the economy of the food as many articles that are used on our own tables; they serve partly as material to thicken the soups, and partly as nourishment to satisfy hunger. As I proceeded further on my journey, I found that manioc, sweet-potatoes, and green plantains took the place of the corn-pap and Bongo sauces, whilst it should be observed that in the more northerly regions cereals formed the basis of the food.
On the twelfth morning of our march I rose with the welcome prospect of that day reaching Aboo Sammat’s Seriba. Attending to my toilet, and taking my time over my breakfast, I did not quit the camp at Kulenjo until long after the last of the bearers had left. The day brought me along a charming walk, and yielded a fine harvest of botanical treasures; we crossed four streams, passed several isolated hamlets, and finally entered a dense forest of lofty trees. This was no park with its alternations of meadows and thickets, trees and groves: it was a veritable forest in our northern sense, but infinitely more lovely and varied, and not marked by the solemn monotony of our native woods. In contrast to the surrounding country, the forest land extended over an area of many miles to the north and south of the Seriba, and nowhere did it show an exclusive predominance of any single species. Trees there were most striking and stately, but the most remarkable circumstance about them was the diversity they displayed; a fact that may be comprehended, when it is stated that amongst thirty adjacent trees were found representatives of no less than twenty different classes.