Part 12 (1/2)

Not all ers were desirable coether by the neck, were brought aboard in charge of three native soldiers When I asked the captain who and what they were he replied, ”They are cannibals They ate two of their fellow tribes down the river to be tried” These were the first eaters of huo One conspicuous detail was their teeth which were all filed down to sharp points I later discovered that these wolf teeth, as they o cannibals The punishh every native, whatever his offence, is given a trial by the Belgian authorities

So far as e the white man as an article of diet is concerned, cannibaliso Soard the flesh of their own kind as the last word in edibles The practice must be carried on in secret To have partaken of the huarded as an act which endows the consumer with almost supernatural powers The cannibal has always justified his procedure in a characteristic way When the early explorers and ainst the barbarous performance they were invariably oats and we eat men

What is the difference?” There seenated as ”food that once talked”

In the days when cannibalism was rampant, the liver of the white man was looked upon as a special delicacy for the reason that it was supposed to transe of its for eaten the heart of the white, no harm could coh these odious practices have practically ceased except in isolated instances, the Congo native, in boasting of his strength, constantly speaks of his liver, and not of his heart

It was on the Lualaba, after the boat had tied up for the night, that I caught the first whisper of the jungle In Africa Nature is in her frankest mood but she expresses herself in subdued tones All my life I had read of the witchery of these equatorial places, but no description is ever adequate You ic No painter, for instance, can translate to canvas the elusive and ever-changing verdure of the dense forests under the brilliant tropical sun, nor can those eleestion of wild bird and beast that lurk everywhere at night, be reproduced Life flows on like a

Accustomed as I was to dense populations, the loneliness of the Lualaba eird and haunting On the Mississippi, Ohio, and Hudson rivers in America and on the Seine, the Thaested human life and hear a vast din In Africa, and with the possible exception of sons with almost undisputed sway Settlements appear at rare intervals You only encounter an occasional native canoe The steaht at some sand-bank and you fall asleep invested by an uncanny silence

I spent six days on the Lualaba where we ht Many of these halts were at wood-posts where our supply of fuel was renewed At one post I found a lonely Scotch trader who had been in the Congo fifteen years Every night he puts on his kilts and parades through the native village playing the bagpipes It is his one touch with home At another place I had a brief visit with another Scotchman, a veteran of the World War, who had established a prosperous plantation and who goes about in a khaki kilt, much to the joy of the natives, who see in his bare knees a kinshi+p with themselves

At Kabalo I touched the war zone This postof the railway that runs eastward to Lake Tanganyika and which Rhodes included in one of his Cape-to-Cairo routes Along this road travelled the thousands of Congo fighting men on their way to the scene of hostilities in Gerian Colonial Government held that the Berlin Treaty of 1885, entitled ”A General Act Relating to Civilization in Africa” and prohibiting warfare in the Congo basin, should be enforced This treaty gave birth to the Congo Free State and ian sovereignty

Following their usual fashi+on the Germans looked upon this docua This forced the Belgian Congo into the conflict About 20,000 native troops were mobilized and under the command of General Taa, co-operated with the British throughout the entire East African caholds, and helped to clear the Teuton out of the country

Lake Tanganyika was the scene of one of the most brilliant and spectacular naval battles of the war Two British motor launches, which were conveyed in sections all the way frounboat and disabled another, thus purging those waters of the Geric importance for the transport of food and munitions for the Allied troops in German East Africa It is one of the loveliest inland bodies of water in the world for it is fringed ooded heights and is navigable throughout its entire length of four hundred miles Ujiji, on its eastern shore, is the stone The house where the illustrious missionary lived still stands, and is an object of veneration both for black and white visitors

Froation on the Lualaba teo settlement with the official residence of the Commissaire of the District, office of the Native Commissioner, and a dozen stores It is also the southern rail-head of the Chemin de Fer Grands Lacs, which extends to Stanleyville Early in theI boarded what looked to me like a toy train, for it was tinier than any I had ever seen before, and started for Kindu The journey occupies two days and traverses a highly Arabized section

Back in the days when Tippo Tib, the friend of Stanley, was king of the Arab slave traders, this area was his hunting ground Many of the natives are Moha robes Their cleanliness is in sharp contrast with the lack of sanitary precautions observed by the average unclothed native The only blacks ash every day in the Congo are those who live on the rivers The favoritein the bush country is to scrape off a week's or a lass

In the Congo the trains, like the boats, stop for the night Various causes are responsible for the procedure In the early days of railroading elephants and other wild animals frequently tore up the tracks Another contributory reason is that the carriages are only built for day travel Native houses are provided for the traveller at different points on the line Since everyone carries his own bed it is easy to establish sleeping quarters without delay or inconvenience On this particular trip I slept at Malela, in the house ordinarily occupied by the Chief Engineer of the line The Minister of the Colonies had used it the night before and it was scrupulously clean I reater discomfort in metropolitan hotels

I was now in the almost absolute domain of the native The only white men that I encountered were an occasional priest and a still more occasional trader At Kiboot out to stretch s I saw a man and a woman who looked unmistakably American The man had Texas written all over him for he was tall and lank and looked as if he had spent his life on the ranges He ca and said, ”The Minister of the Colonies was through here yesterday in a special train and he said that an A close behind, so I came down to see you” The man proved to be J G Cain nine kilo His ith him and she was the only white woman within two hundred o industries, which is cotton cultivation The whole area between Kongolo and Stanleyville, three-fourths of which is one vast tropical forest, has iian Government has laid out experi In 1919 four thousand acres were cultivated in the Manyeion, and six hundred in the Loether the Colony produced 6,000,000 pounds of the raw staple in 1920 and soht the art

The Congo Cotton Company has been formed at Brussels with a capitalization of 6,000,000 francs, to exploit the new industry, which is bound to be an io It shows that the ruthless exploitation of the earlier days is succeeded by scientific and constructive expansion

Cain discloses the principal need of the Congo today which is adequate transport Between its arrival at the o River and Kibombo the mass of machinery was trans-shi+pped exactly four ti from rail to river At Kibombo the 550,000 pounds of metal had to be carried on the heads of natives to the scene of operations In the Congo practically every ton of e load is sixty pounds--through the greater part of its journey

Late in the afternoon of the day which marked the encounter with the Caation on the Lualaba is resu of the difficulty of travelling in this part of the world It was e since Bukao

[Illustration: NATIVE FISH TRAPS AT STANLEY FALLS]

At Kindu I had a rare piece of luck I fell in with Louis Franck, the Belgian Minister of the Colonies, to who a tour of inspection of the Congo He had landed at Moian possessions of Urundi and Ruanda which are spoils of war, and anyika He asked ladly accepted because, aside from the personal compensation afforded by his society, it meant immunity from worry about the river and train connections

Franck represents the new type of Colonial Minister Instead of being a ressive in with, he is one of the foremost adium he at once became conspicuous He resisted the Teutonic scheed country

After the investomaster and the Spanish Minister, he went to the Gerement by which the city was saved from destruction by bombardian Army to escape to the Yser Subsequently his activities on behalf of his countrymen made him so distasteful to the Germans that he was imprisoned in Germany for nearly a year For two months of this time he shared the noble exile of Monsieur Max, the heroic Burgomaster of Brussels

I now becaian colonial official and to the native, Franck incarnated a sort of All Highest In the Congo all functionaries are called ”Bula Matadi,”

which inally bestowed on Stanley when he dynao

Franck, however, was a super ”Bula Matadi” We had a special boat, the ”Baron Delbecke,” a one hundred ton craft somewhat similar to the ”Louis Cousin” but much cleaner, for she had been scrubbed up for the journey