The Country of the Dwarfs. Du Chaillu Paul Belloni
leaves which were to protect us from the rains, while his two sons collected as fast as they could the leaves, and I looked after firewood. I soon came to a spot where the dead branches lay thick on the ground, and I shouted, "Come here, boys!" A little after sunset our camp was built and our fires were lighted; then the boys pulled from their bags several plantains and a little parcel of dried fish packed in leaves. Not far from our camp a little rivulet ran meandering toward the sea; its water was clear and cool, so we had chosen a nice spot for the bivouac; but fires were to be kept burning brightly all night, "for," said Mayombo, "leopards are very plentiful here; we can not keep our goats; and two men have been missing within a month." After that exhortation, Mayombo, who was a great smoker, filled his pipe and lay down by the fire. In the mean time my supper had been cooked, but I was too tired to enjoy it, and I was too tired even to sleep.
The next evening we returned to the plantation, where all were glad to see us. After a day of rest we started again, for Mayombo swore that I should not rest till I had an ipi. We went in another direction, and Mayombo again took his two sons with him. Toward noon Mayombo gave a cluck, and pointed out to me a dead tree lying on the ground, and a strange-looking track leading up to it, and whispered into my ears the word "Ipi!"
That dead tree had been lying there, I suppose, for hundreds of years; nothing remained of it but the trunk, which was hollow throughout, and looked like a tube fifty or sixty feet long.
I examined the ground carefully at one end of the trunk, and saw no footprint there, so the animal had not gone out; at the other end the tracks were fresh, and it was evident that the animal had hidden inside the night before. I said to Mayombo, "Perhaps the ipi has gone away." "Oh no," said he; "don't you see there is only one track? Besides, it could not turn on itself, and, in order to get out, it has to go straight on to the other end."
Immediately he took the axe and cut down some branches of a tree, of which he made a trap to catch the animal if it should come out. The branch was put firmly in the ground, and the top was bent over with a creeper attached to it, at the end of which was a ring, through which the animal would have to pass before he could get out; a little forked stick held the ring, which the animal would shake as it passed through; the limb would fly up instantly, and high in the air would the ipi dangle.
When all this had been done, Mayombo, who had collected wood at the other end, set fire to it, to smoke the animal out. He was not mistaken; the ipi was inside, and it made for the opposite extremity and was caught. There was a short struggle, but we ran up and ended it by knocking the ipi with all our might on the head.
I saw at once that the ipi belonged to the pangolin genus (Manis of the zoologists), which is a very singular kind of animal. They are ant-eaters, like the Myrmecophaga of South America; but, while the South American ant-eater is covered with hair like other mammalia, the pangolins have an armor of large scales implanted in the skin of the upper surface of the body, from the head to the tip of the tail, each scale overlapping the other like the slates on the roof of a house.
Like the ant-eater of South America, the pangolins have no teeth, but they have a long extensile tongue, the extremity of which is covered with a glutinous secretion so sticky that their prey, after having been touched, adheres to the tongue and can not get away. The tongue of an ipi may be extended out several inches. The ipi feeds on ants.
During the day the ipi hides itself in its burrow in the earth, or sometimes in the large hollows of colossal trunks of trees which have fallen to the ground, like the tree just described to you; but they generally prefer to burrow in the soil, and these burrows are usually found in light soil on the slope of a hill. By the singular structure of the ipi, it can not turn to the right or to the left at once; in fact, it is quite incapable of bending its body sideways, so it can not "right about face" in its burrow. Accordingly, there are two holes in each burrow, one for entrance and one for exit.
But if the ipi and the pangolin can not bend their bodies sideways, they are very flexible vertically, their stomachs having no scales; so, if they are surprised or want to sleep, they roll themselves in a ball, the head being inside and forming the centre, and they coil and uncoil themselves in this manner very readily.
The only way you can find the ipi or the pangolin is by the trail they leave on the soil, and following them till you reach their burrows.
The great trouble in finding the ipi is not only that the animal is very scarce, but that it never comes out except at night, when the rattle it makes among the dead leaves is great. The strange creature must see well with its queer little eyes to be able to perceive the ants upon which it mostly feeds, and it must take time in satisfying its appetite, for a great many little ants must be required to fill its stomach. When the ipi has found a spot where the ants it wants to eat are plentiful, it stops by them, and with its long tongue, which protrudes several inches, catches them one by one. When an ant is caught the tongue goes in again. I wonder how many hundreds of times the tongue must come out and go in with an ant before the hunger of the ipi is satisfied!
I was not mistaken; this ipi was a new species, and the scientific name is Pholidotus Africanus. This large one was a female, and measured four feet six inches from the head to the tip of the tail. It was very stout and heavy, the tail very short in comparison with its body, and the scales very thick, and of a yellow or tawny color. The males are said to be much larger, and, according to what the negroes say, must reach the length of six feet. They are very ugly to look at. Their tail, being very thick, makes a large trail on the ground as they move about.
Though in some respects they may be thought to resemble the lizard, the pangolins have warm blood, and nourish their young like the rest of the mammalia.
I need not tell you that I was glad to discover this new species. After securing the ipi we returned at once to the plantation, and as soon as I arrived I went to work and took off its skin, and hard work it was, I assure you, the scales were so thick and big.
When we came into the village with the ipi there was great excitement, for the animal is so rare that but two or three persons there had ever seen a specimen.
I went to bed happy, feeling that I had had the good fortune of discovering a new and most remarkable animal, which God had long ago created, but which had never before been seen by the white man.
Of course I had a curiosity to see how the ipi tasted, and I had some for breakfast the next morning, and it was good, but not fat, though the natives said that at certain seasons they are very fat.
CHAPTER VII
The dry season had now fairly begun. We were in the month of June, and the nights and evenings were quite pleasant. The days were generally cloudy, and it was a good time of the year for hunting, as most of the bog-land was drying fast.
Nkongon-Boumba was situated in a charming spot on the summit of a gentle hill, at the foot of which ran a little stream of clear water. The country which surrounded it was partly prairie and partly wooded; the soil on the prairie was sandy, but where the woods grew the soil was better. In many places the primitive growth had been cut down, and there the fine plantation of plantain-trees and bananas of King Olenga-Yombi were flourishing well.
How beautiful the country looked in the morning just before sunrise, when a veil of mist seemed to hang over it, and when the dew was still thick on the blades of grass, or was dropping fast from the plantain-leaves! I would get up just at daylight, and would start with my gun on my shoulder, in the hope that I might see a gazelle or an antelope feeding.
Gorillas were very plentiful near Nkongon-Boumba, and were committing great depredations among the plantain and banana trees; the patches of sugar-cane were also very much devastated. I heard one afternoon that the day before gorillas were in the forest not far from the village, and had already begun to play sad havoc with the plantain-trees.
The morning after the news, if you had been in the village, you would have seen me, just a little before daybreak, getting ready to go after the gorillas. I was painting my face and hands with a mixture of powdered charcoal and oil. After my toilet was done, I put on my old, soiled Panama hat, took one of my best guns, called Odanga, one of my boys, to accompany