Lieutenant Stairs, during his reconnaissance from Ibwiri, had reached West Indenduru, and had left the village standing; but because he had occupied it, the natives had set fire to it after his departure. We observed also that the Balessé seldom ate of the produce of a field twice, and that a plantain grove, after bearing fruit once, is abandoned for another; and a corn plot, after being tilled, sown, and harvested, is left to revert to wilderness. They appear to be continually planting bananas and preparing ground for corn, which accounted for the immense clearings we had passed, and for the thousands of trees that littered the ground in one great ruin. For the bananas or plantains, they simply cut down the underwood and plant the young bulbs in a shallow hole, with sufficient earth to keep it upright. They then cut the forest down, and let the trees lie where they fall. In six months the Musa bulbs have thriven wonderfully under shade and among roots and débris, and grown to 8 feet in height; within a year they have borne fruit. The Indian corn or maize requires sunshine. The trees are cut down well above the buttress, by building scaffolds 10, 15, or even 20 feet high. The logs are cut up, and either split for slabs or lining for the inner and outer walls of their huts, or scooped out for troughs for the manufacture of plantain wine. The branches are piled around the plot to rot; they do not burn them, because that would impoverish the soil, and as the surface is rich in humus, it would burn down to the clay.
Considering what great labour is involved in the clearing of a portion of primeval forest, we were tempted to regard the Balessé as very foolish in burning their villages for such a trivial cause as one night's occupation of them by strangers; but it is an instance of the obstinate sullenness of these people. Boryo's village, for instance, could scarcely be constructed under a twelvemonth. The population of the largest village we saw could not exceed 600 souls; but while we wonder at their prejudices, we must award credit to them for great industry and unlimited patience to produce such splendid results as we observed.
East Indenduru was also an exceedingly well-built village, and extremely clean, though the houses within swarmed with vermin. The street, however, was too narrow for the height of the buildings, and a fire occurring in the night might easily have consumed half the inhabitants. For the huts were higher than at Boryo's, and as the buildings were a few hundred yards in length, and had only one principal exit at the eastern end, the danger of a fire was such that we did not occupy it without having taken many precautions to avoid a possible disaster in what appeared to be a perfect trap.