Part 19 (1/2)
Now began a journey that did not lack adventure It was the end of the dry season and the Kasai was lower than ever before The channel was almost a continuous sand-bank We rested on one of them for a whole day
I was noell into the do when I say that the Kasai in places is alive with thee of the river boats almost as easily as you could pick off a sparrow fro them The flesh of the hippopotaard it as a luxury The white man who kills a hippo is immediately acclaimed a hero One reason is that with spears the black finds it difficult to get the better of one of these animals
Our first step was at a Lutheran Mission set in the e As we approached I saw the A over the door of the rass house When I went ashore I found that the missionaries--a man and his wife--were both Aone out to Kansas in his boyhood to work on a farlish with a Swedish accent After spreading the gospel in China and elsewhere, they settled down in this lonely spot on the Kasai River
I was io River and the Kasai The Congo is serene, brooding, ed with an endless verdure The Kasai, although 1,500 nacious Its brown banks and grireen of the great river that gives the Colony its nastone in 1854
I also got another change Two days after I left Di and the air was raw and chill On the Kasai you can have every experience of trans-Atlantic travel with the sole exception of seasickness
As I proceeded up the Kasai I found continued evidence of the advance in price of every food commodity The os frooat has risen froh as ever, despite the rise But foodstuffs are only a so economic troubles
We have suffered for soh Cost of Living It is slight coo Here you touch a real hardshi+p Before the war a first-class wife--all wives are bought--sold for fifty francs
Today the market price for a choice spouse is two hundred francs and it takes hard digging for the black h Cost of Matrimony enters the list of universal distractions
On the ”Madeleine” was a fascinating black child named Nanda He was about five years old and strolled about the boat absolutely naked Most Congo parents are fond of their offspring but this particular youngster, as bright and alert, was adored by his father, the head fireave him a cake and it was the first piece of sweet bread he had ever eaten Evidently he liked it for afterwards he approached me every hour with his little hands outstretched I was anxious to get a photograph of him in his natural state and took hiers had a ca When the boy saw that he was about to be snapped he rushed back to the boat yelling and howling I did not knoas thean abbreviated pair of pants and a short coat He illing to walk about nude but when it ca pictured he suddenly becaeneral in the Colony
[Illustration: FISHERMEN ON THE SANKURU]
[Illustration: THE FALLS OF THE SANKURU]
The African child is fond of playthings which shows that one touch of amusement h a crocodile-infested river to get an empty tin can or a bottle One of the favorite sports on the river boats is to throw boxes or bottles into the water and then watch the children race for theo the fathers sometimes manufacture rude reproductions of stealy well made
Exactly twelve days after we left Di Djoko Punda The country was mountainous and the river had beco Wissation for some distance These falls are named for Herman Wissmann, a lieutenant in the Prussian Army who in the opinion of such authorities as Sir Harry Johnston, ranks third in the hierarchy of early Congo explorers Stanley, of course, comes first and Grenfell second
On account of the lack of certain communication save by runner in this part of Africa--the traveller can always beat a wirelessand I wondered whoest possible letters to all the Foretthat reatly relieved, therefore, e caures standing on the bank What cheered me further were two American motor cars nearby
The two Americans proved to be G D Moody and J E Robison The forineer of the Fore of the enuine Arass house off American food that had travelled nearly fifteen thousand miles I heard the first unadulterated Yankee conversation that had fallen on my ears since I left Elizabethville two months before When I said that I wanted to push on to Tshi+kapa at once, Moody said, ”We will leave at five in thein one of the jitneys and be in Tshi+kapa toible optimist as I was soon to discover
IV
At dawn the nextand after a breakfast of hot cakes we set out
Nelson was in a great state of excitement because he had never ridden in an autoe very long The rough highway hewed by Ah the thick woods was a foot deep in sand and before we had proceeded a hundred yards the car got stuck and all hands save Moody got out to push it on Moody was the chauffeur and had to rele about me had an almost eerie look But aesthetic and eive way to practicality Laboriously the jitney snorted through the sand and bumped over tree stumps After a strenuous hour and e had reached the open country, the roan and died on the spot We were on a broad plain on the outskirts of a village and the broiling sun beat down on us
The African picaninny has just as much curiosity as his American brother and in ten minutes the whole juvenile population was asserown-ups joined the crowd Naked women examined the tires as if they were articles of food and black warriors stalked about with the same sort of ”I told you so” expression that you find in the face of the average A a motor car breakdown Human nature is the same the world over The automobile is a novelty in these parts and when the Forht it was an aniet tired and quit Mine stopped without getting tired!
For six hours Moody laboured under the car while I sat in the glaring sun alongside the road and cursed fate Nelson spent his tiht Finally, at three o'clock Moody gave up and said, ”We'll have to make the rest of this trip in a teapoy”
A teapoy is usually a ha on a pole carried on the shoulders of natives We sent a runner in to Robison, who came back with two teapoys and a squad of forty blacks to transport us The ”teapoy boy,”
as he is called, is as much a part of the African scheme of life as a driver or a chauffeur is in A, and sound of wind, because he is required to go at a run all the time For any considerable journey each teapoy has a squad of eighta step They always sing as they go