Then we went back to the plantation, and the following day all, including the women, returned with axes and baskets to get the tusks, and as much of the meat as we could.
The huge tusks of the bull were imbedded in his head over thirty-one inches, so there were only about four feet of the tusk outside. He was ten feet in height, and had fine big ears. The hair on his tail was long and coarse. One of his tusks weighed sixty-nine pounds, the other sixty-two. The tusks of the cow elephants were smaller, the biggest not weighing more than twenty-nine pounds.
Rogala, Shinshooko, and Alapai danced round the elephants and cut their tails off, to add to the number they had. Then we made for the plantation with all the meat our canoes could carry. A big platform was built to smoke the meat. We fed on elephant meat for a time, but it was far from being as good as monkey flesh.
WE BUILD A FORTIFIED CAMP IN THE DEPTHS OF THE FOREST--STRUCTURE OF THE CAMP--LAYING IN STORES OF PROVISIONS--KOOLA NUTS--SOURCE OF MY INFLUENCE OVER THE NATIVES
ONE evening as Rogala, Shinshooko, Alapai, and I were seated around a blazing fire, we talked about gorillas, elephants, and other big game, and determined to go and build an "olako" camp in the deep and gloomy recesses of the forest, taking with us Andekko and Ndova.
The following day the women put a large quantity of cassava roots or manioc in the stream running near Rogala's house; these were to remain in the water three days, after which they were to be cut, pounded, cooked, and made into cakes.
I was short of soap; so my hunters collected a quantity of palm nuts, the kind from which palm oil is made. These nuts we boiled until the pulp became quite soft. Then the women pounded the nuts in wooden mortars, and the pulp furnished the oil. I then gathered all the ashes from the fires, boiled these for a long time, then leaving the ashes at the bottom of the vessel, took the water and boiled it with a certain amount of palm oil. By this process I made soft soap.
I had to wash my own clothes, for not only did the people not know how, but in one sense did not know what clean linen was. They could not tell whether my clothes were soiled or not. I did not wonder, seeing the way they made their toilet. After taking a bath, they rubbed their bodies with oil mixed with clay, or with oil mixed with the powder of odoriferous woods. This was what they called making themselves clean.