t: he is nothing, as
compared in power of damaging his assailant, to a leopard or lion, but
is more like a man unarmed, for it does not occur to him to use his
canine teeth, which are long and formidable. Numbers of them come down
in the forest, within a hundred yards of our camp, and would be unknown
but for giving tongue like fox-hounds: this is their nearest approach to
speech. A man hoeing was stalked by a soko, and seized; he roared out,
but the soko giggled and grinned, and left him as if he had done it in
play. A child caught up by a soko is often abused by being pinched and
scratched, and let fall.

The soko kills the leopard occasionally, by seizing both paws, and
biting them so as to disable them, he then goes up a tree, groans over
his wounds, and sometimes recovers, while the leopard dies: at other
times, both soko and leopard die. The lion kills him at once, and
sometimes tears his limbs off, but does not eat him. The soko eats no
flesh--small bananas are his dainties, but not maize. His food consists
of wild fruits, which abound: one, Stafene, or Manyuema Mamwa, is like
large sweet sop but indifferent in taste and flesh. The soko brings
forth at times twins. A very large soko was seen by Mohamad's hunters
sitting picking his nails; they tried to stalk him, but he vanished.
Some Manyuema think that their buried dead rise as sokos, and one was
killed with holes in his ears, as if he had been a man. He is very
strong and fears guns but not spears: he never catches women.

Sokos collect together, and make a drumming noise, some say with hollow
trees, then burst forth into loud yells which are well imitated by the
natives' embryotic music. If a man has no spear the soko goes away
satisfied, but if wounded he seizes the wrist, lops off the fingers, and
spits them out, slaps the cheeks of his victim, and bites without
breaking the skin: he draws out a spear (but never uses it), and takes
some leaves and stuffs them into his wound to staunch the blood; he does
not wish an encounter with an armed man. He sees women do him no harm,
and never molests them; a man without a spear is nearly safe from him.
They beat hollow trees as drums with hands, and then scream as music to
it; when men hear them, they go to the sokos; but sokos never go to men
with hostility. Manyuema say, "Soko is a man, and nothing bad in him."

They live in communities of about ten, each having his own female; an
intruder from another camp is be