Lost in the Jungle; Narrated for Young PeopleDu Chaillu, Paul B. (Paul Belloni)
General
Lost in the Jungle; Narrated for Young People
Du Chaillu, Paul B. (Paul Belloni)
Africa, West -- Description and travel; Africa, West -- Description and travel -- Juvenile literature
In the evening I was seated on one of those little round Apingi stools,
and Remandji and I were talking about the back country. I felt very much
interested in the account he gave me of it, as he spoke of a tribe of
people I had never seen, when lo! what did I see? Okabi, carrying on his
back a dead leopard! I rubbed my eyes, thinking it was a mistake. No;
it was Okabi himself, and a dead leopard.
How Okabi got the leopard I could not imagine, but surely he had it, and
there was no mistake about it. He placed the leopard at my feet, saying,
"Did I not tell you I had a fetich to kill leopards?" Remandji also
said, "Did I not tell you I had a man who had a big fetich to kill
leopards?"
[Illustration: OKABI AND THE LEOPARD.]
"I believe," said I to Remandji, "that when he promised to kill a
leopard for me he had a trap set, and he knew that a leopard was in it.
For," said I, "no man can make leopards come to him." "Oh yes," said
Remandji, "there are men who have fetiches which have power to make game
come to them."
I coaxed Okabi to show me his leopard fetich. He promised to do so the
next day. He came, but I have very little doubt that he took something
off from it he did not want me to see.
He entered my hut and then untied the skin, and after he spread it out I
saw the contents which made the fetich. There were ashes of different
plants, little pieces of wood, the small head of a young squirrel, claws
of the wonderful guanionien, feathers of birds, bones of animals I could
not recognize, bones of birds, dried intestines of animals, some dried
brain of young chimpanzee, a very rare land-shell, scales of fishes, a
little bit of scrapings from the skull of one of his ancestors. These
were the things that made the leopards come to him.
"And if one of all these things you see," said he to me, "were missing,
the fetich or monda would be good for nothing."
Time passed pleasantly in that fine country, and one day, as I was
quietly reading my Bible outside of my hut, a crowd assembled and
watched me with wondering eyes. I told them that when I read this book
it taught me that God was the Great Spirit who had made the stars, the
moon, the rivers, the mountains, and all the wild beasts, and every
thing that was in the world.
Then I read some verses aloud to them. I told them that God said people
must not worship that which they had made with their own hands, but any
thing they wanted they must ask of him. They must love him. He said
people must not tell lies--must not kill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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