Part 11 (2/2)

Frooes an entirely new experience Men succumb because they foolishly think they can continue the habits of civilization Alcohol is the curse of all the hot countries The wise man never takes a drink until the sun sets and then, if he continues to be wise, he i” and the lunch-time cocktail have undermined more health in the tropics than all the flies and ton recommended a foro The doughty old warrior once said:

I know but one recipe for good health in this country, and that is to live moderately, to drink little or no wine, to use exercise, to keep the ood humour with the world The last is the most difficult, for as you have often observed, there is scarcely a good-tempered man in India

If a rains of quinine every day, exercise whenever it is possible, and keep his body clean, he has little to fear froo It is one of the ironies of civilization that after passing unscathed through all the fever country, I caught a cold the ot back to steam-heat and all the cogage in the Congo Everything must be packed and conveyed in metal boxes siypt and India This is because the white ant is the prize destroyer of property throughout Africa He cuts through leather and ith the saro's teeth lacerate waterht and you will find the These ants eat away floors and so away the wooden supports Another frequent guest is the driver ant, which travels in armies and frequently takes complete possession of a house It destroys all the vermin but the huoes on

Since my return o The necessity for them was apparent I had , often alone, and for the most part on small river boats where there is no deck space for exercise Mail arrives irregularly and there were no newspapers After one or two days the unceasing panoraes becoe numbers, the omnipresent crocodile, and the occasional wild elephant, cease to a friend and coood book

I therefore carried with ne's Essays, Palgrave's Golden Treasury of English Verse, Lockhart's Life of Napoleon, Autobiography of Cellini, Don Quixote, The Three Musketeers, Lorna Doone, Prescott's Conquest of Mexico and The Conquest of Peru, Les Miserables, Vanity Fair, Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, Pepys' Diary, Carlyle's French Revolution, The Last of the Mohicans, Westward Ho, Bleak House, The Pickwick Papers, A Tale of Two Cities, and Tolstoi's War and Peace When these beca lish book I could find was Arnold Bennett's The Pretty Lady, which had fallen into the hands of an official, as trying to learn English with it It certainly gave him a hectic start

Then, too, there was the eternal servant proble in that land of servants than elsewhere I had cabled to Horner to engage me two personal servants or ”boys” as they are called in Africa When I got to Elizabethville I found that he had secured two In addition to Swahili, the lish and the other French, the official language in the Congo I did not like the looks of the English-speaking barbarian so I took a chance on Number Those name was Gerome He was a so-called ”educated” native I was to find froely in the direction of indolence and inefficiency I thought that by having a boy houage Later on I realized my mistake because my French is a non-conductor of profanity

[Illustration: A STATION SCENE AT KONGOLA]

Geroht, the consort constitutes the husband's fortune, being cook, tiller of the ground, beast-of-burden and slave generally I had no desire to incumber myself with this black Venus, so II left hiurume with Horner by autoe and have the private car, which I had chartered for the journey to Bukauru I saas Gerome's wife, with her a herself on the platfor hih to cook ian francs a , was considerably less than three dollars I also had to give him a weekly allowance of five francs (about thirty cents) for his food To the Aures will be so

One more human interest detail before we ets a name from the natives This appellation usually expresses his chief characteristic The first title fastened on me was ”_Bwana Cha Cha_,” which means ”The Master Who is Quick” When I first heard this naht it was a reflection on my appetite because ”_Cha Cha_” is pronounced ”Che” Subsequently, in the Upper Congo and the Kasai I was called ”_Mafutta Mingi_,” which means ”Much Fat” I o I atein the atood appetite is always an indication of health in the tropics

Still another name that I bore was ”_Tala Tala_,” which o dialects There are nearly two hundred tribes and each has a distinctive tongue In many sections that I visited the natives had never seen a pair of tortoise shell glasses such as I wear during the day The children fled fro that I was a sorcerer Even gifts of food, the one universal passport to the native heart, failed to calo native, let reater beca Leopold In his present state the only rulea native for a service It would be misunderstood because the black man out there mistakes kindness for weakness You must be fir frole, appear to be rude and ill-mannered It is si, and it becomes a habit

Stanley, for example, was often called a boor and a brute when in reality he wasa fine nature behind the armour necessary to resist native imposition and worse

III

The private car on which I travelled frourume to Bukaood-bye north I realized that I was divorcing myself from comfort and companionshi+p In thirty hours I was in sun-scorched Bukama, the southern rail-head of the Cape-to-Cairo Route andinto the ins the historic Lualaba, which is the initial link in the alo River I at once went aboard the first of the boats which were to be my habitation intermittently for so many weeks It was the ”Louis Cousin,” a 150-ton vessel and a fair example of the draft which provides the principal o Practically all transit not on the hoof, so to speak, in the Colony is by water There are able for steamers and twice as many more accessible for canoes and launches Hence the river-boat is a staple, and a picturesque one at that

The ”Louis Cousin” was typical of her kind both in appointment, or rather the lack of it, and human interest details Like all her sisters she resembles the small Ohio River boats that I had seen in o steam craft es on either side, and secondly because there are so et is the bare room--are on the upper deck, which is the white ht--human and otherwise--are on the lower This is the bailiwick of the black These boats always stop at night for wood, the only fuel, and the natives are coo river-boat is a coerie

Like the ”accoing because it will stop anywhere to enable a passenger to get off and do a little shopping, or permit the captain to take afor human society

The river captain is a versatile individual for he is steward, doctor, posteneral He aloneat will Tiht It is in truth the land of leisure For the htmare Accustomed as I was to swift transport, I spent a year every day

The skipper of the ”Louis Cousin” was no exception to his kind

He was a big Norwegian naues are Scandinavians,--and he had spent eighteen years in the Congo He knew every one of the thousand nooks, turns, snags and sand-bars of the Lualaba One of the first things that io boats are navigated through what seeetation and obstruction

The bane of traffic is the sand-bar, which on account of the swift currents everywhere, is an eternally changing quantity Hence a native is constantly engaged in taking soundings with a long stick You can hear his not unmusical voice, froht The native word for water is ”_mia_” Whenever I heard the cry ”_ht because that o River no boat can draw htiest of streams declines to an alers on the ”Louis Cousin” were ians on their way hoo River, after years of service in the Colony We all ate together in the tiny dining saloon forith the captain, who usually provides the ”chop,” as it is called I nownanny is not undesirable as an occasional novelty but when she is served up to you every day, it becooat in the Congo daily menu is the chicken, the mainstay of the country I know a o and he kept a record of every fowl he consuistered exactly three thousand It is no uncoht antelope or buffalo aboard but goat and fowl, reinforced by tinned goods and an occasional egg, constituted the bill of fare You may wonder, perhaps, that in a country which is a continuous chicken-coop, there should be a scarcity of eggs The answer lies in the fact that during the last few years the natives have conceived a sudden taste for eggs Formerly they were afraid to eat them

Of course, there was always an abundance of fruit You can get pineapples, grape fruit, oranges, bananas and a first cousin of the cantaloupe, called the _pei pei_, which when sprinkled with lime juice is most delicious Bananas can be purchased for five cents a bunch of one hundred It is about the only cheap thing in the Congo except servants

[Illustration: A NATIVE MARKET AT KINDU]