It Was A Very Different Dwelling To Gray
Shirt's Residence At Arevooma.
I was as high as its roof ridge and
had to stoop low to get through the door-hole.
Inside, the hut was
fourteen or fifteen feet square, unlit by any window. The door-hole
could be closed by pushing a broad piece of bark across it under two
horizontally fixed bits of stick. The floor was sand like the
street outside, but dirtier. On it in one place was a fire, whose
smoke found its way out through the roof. In one corner of the room
was a rough bench of wood, which from the few filthy cloths on it
and a wood pillow I saw was the bed. There was no other furniture
in the hut save some boxes, which I presume held my host's earthly
possessions. From the bamboo roof hung a long stick with hooks on
it, the hooks made by cutting off branching twigs. This was
evidently the hanging wardrobe, and on it hung some few fetish
charms, and a beautiful ornament of wild cat and leopard tails, tied
on to a square piece of leopard skin, in the centre of which was a
little mirror, and round the mirror were sewn dozens of common shirt
buttons. In among the tails hung three little brass bells and a
brass rattle; these bells and rattles are not only "for dandy," but
serve to scare away snakes when the ornament is worn in the forest.
A fine strip of silky-haired, young gorilla skin made the band to
sling the ornament from the shoulder when worn. Gorillas seem well
enough known round here. One old lady in the crowd outside, I saw,
had a necklace made of sixteen gorilla canine teeth slung on a pine-
apple fibre string. Gray Shirt explained to me that this is the
best house in the village, and my host the most renowned elephant
hunter in the district.
We then returned to the canoe, whose occupants had been getting
uneasy about the way affairs were going "on top," on account of the
uproar they heard and the time we had been away. We got into the
canoe and took her round the little promontory at the end of the
island to the other beach, which is the main beach. By arriving at
the beach when we did, we took our Fan friends in the rear, and they
did not see us coming in the gloaming. This was all for the best,
it seems, as they said they should have fired on us before they had
had time to see we were rank outsiders, on the apprehension that we
were coming from one of the Fan towns we had passed, and with whom
they were on bad terms regarding a lady who bolted there from her
lawful lord, taking with her - cautious soul! - a quantity of rubber.
The only white man who had been here before in the memory of man,
was a French officer who paid Kiva six dollars to take him
somewhere, I was told - but I could not find out when, or what
happened to that Frenchman.
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