NATIVES
Up To This Time, Save For A Few Masai At The Very Beginning Of
Our Trip, We Had Seen No Natives At All.
Only lately, the night
of the lion dance, one of the Wanderobo-the forest hunters-had
drifted in to tell us of buffalo and to get some meat.
He was a
simple soul, small and capable, of a beautiful red-brown, with
his hair done up in a tight, short queue. He wore three skewers
about six inches long thrust through each of his ears, three
strings of blue beads on his neck, a bracelet tight around his
upper arm, a bangle around his ankle, a pair of rawhide sandals,
and about a half yard of cotton cloth which he hung from one
shoulder. As weapons he carried a round-headed, heavy club, or
runga, and a long-bladed spear. He led us to buffalo, accepted a
thirty-three cent blanket, and made fire with two sticks in about
thirty seconds. The only other evidences of human life we had
come across were a few beehives suspended in the trees. These
were logs, bored hollow and stopped at either end. Some of them
were very quaintly carved. They hung in the trees like strange
fruits.
Now, however, after leaving the Isiola, we were to quit the game
country and for days travel among the swarming millions of the
jungle.
A few preliminary and entirely random observations may be
permitted me by way of clearing the ground for a conception of
these people.
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