Part 20 (1/2)

V

Tshi+kapa, which means ”belt,” is a Little America in every sense It commands the junction of the Tshi+kapa and Kasai rivers There are dozens of substantial brick dwellings, offices, warehouses, ola border and far beyond, the Yankee has cut enerally You see Ahness on all sides, even in the ies where thecoes the blacks to establish their own settlements and live their own lives It makes them more contented and therefore more efficient, and it establishes a colony of perets restless and wants to go back hoo labour probleood old United States spoken with every dialectic flavour froe of all the operations in the field was Doyle, a clear-cut, upstanding Aineer who had served his apprenticeshi+p in the Angola jungles, where he was aparties With his wife he lived in a large brick bungalow and I was their guest in it during my entire stay in the diae that animated Mrs Wallace Too much cannot be said of the faith and fortitude of these women who share their husband's fortunes out at the frontiers of civilization

At Tshi+kapa there were other white wo Mrs Dunn, who had recently converted her hospitable home into a small maternity hospital

Only a feeeks before er of the Mabonda Mine, had given birth to a girl baby under its roof, and I was taken over at once to see the latest addition to the American colony

On the day of my arrival the natives eift of fifty newly-laid eggs as a present for the baby

Acco it was a rude note scrawled by one of the foremen who had attended a Presbyterian reat event in the Congo When Mrs Barclay returned to her horand celebration was held and the natives feasted and danced in honour of the infant

There is a delightful social life at Tshi+kapa Most of the ineers, are within a day's travelling distance in a teapoy and ers have their faather at the , the Fourth of July, and Christ rally which includes a dance and vaudeville show in the men's mess hall The Stars and Stripes are unfurled to the African breeze and the old days in the States recalled

It is real cole

I was struck with the big difference between the Congo diamond fields and those at Kiashes in the earth thousands of feet wide and thousands deep They are all ”pipes” which are formed by volcanic eruption These pipes are the real source of the diaround which contains the stones is spread out on immense ”floors” to decompose under sun and rain Afterwards it is broken in crushers and goes through a series of mechanical transformations The dia table covered with vaseline The geinous substance It is an elaborate process

The Congo mines are alluvial and every creek and river bed is therefore a potential diamond mine The only labour necessary is to remove the upper layer of earth,--the ”overburden” as it is terravel, shake it out, and you have the concentrate froe can pick the precious stones They are precisely like the mines of German South-West Africa So far no ”pipes” have been discovered in the Kasai basin Many indications have been found, and it is inevitable that they will be located in ti earth soineers in the Congo hom I talked are convinced that these volcanic fore stones, lie far up in the Kasai hills The diaola covers nearly eight thousand square miles and only five per cent has been prospected There is not the slightest doubt that one of the greatest dia here

Now for a real human interest detail At Kimberley the Zulus and Kaffirs know the value of the dia All the workers are segregated in barbed wire compounds and kept under constant surveillance At the end of their period of service they remain in custody for teeks in order to make certain that they have not sed any stones

[Illustration: GRAVEL CARRIERS AT A CONGO MINE]

[Illustration: CONGO NATIVES PICKING OUT DIAMONDS]

The Congo natives do not knohat a diamond really is The lass eood many bottles of various kinds in the Colony Hence no watch is kept on the hundreds of Balubas who arejewels During the past five years, when the product in the Congo fields has grown steadily, not a single karat has been stolen The saola fields

In coht principalin all its stages of advanceht of Tshi+kapa, the sravel is shaken, are operated by hand This is the most primitive h platforer scale The Ramona mine has steae of William McMillan, I witnessed the last word in alluvial dia power plant whose tall sestion of Kimberley for the excavation is immense, and there is the hum and movement of a pretentious industrial enterprise Under the direction of William McMillan a research department has been established which is expected to influence and possibly change alluvial operations

Our luncheon at Tshi+sundu was attended by Mrs McMillan, another heroine of that rugged land Alongside sat her son, born in 1918 at one of the mines in the field and as as lusty and anister as I have seen His every le eye of his native nurse as about twelve years old These native attendants regard it as a special privilege to act as custodians of a white child and invariably a close intimacy is established between theine that these Congo diao The task of exploitation has been an immense one Before the simplest mine can be operated the dense forest must be cleared and the river beds drained Every day the er is confronted with soenuity and resource

Only the Anglo-Saxon could hold his own a circumstances

No less difficult were the natives theineers, industry was unknown in the Upper Kasai The only organized activity was the harvesting of rubber and that was rather a haphazard perfor of the anized service They had never even seen the iiven wheel-barrows and told to fill and transport the earth, they placed the barrows on their heads and carried thenated place They repeated the sahly impressed the value and the nobility of labour I asked one of the eht of the Americans His reply was, ”Americans and ere born on the sain land was only one phase Every piece of machinery and every tin of food had to be transported thousands of miles and this condition still obtains The motor road froineers through the jungle It is coh everything must be shi+fted from railway to boat several times Between Djoko Punda and Tshi+kapa the ons or conveyed on the heads of porters to Kabambaie Some of it is transshi+pped to whale-boats and paddled up to Tshi+kapa, and the re 1920 seven hundred and fifty tons of freight were hauled from Djoko Punda in this laborious way

At the tio field, and three new ones were in various stages of advanceineers also operate the diaa Railhich will run froa to Kinshassa

More than twelve thousand natives are eo area alone and nowhere have I seen a ood-will by wisely keeping the price of trade goods such as salt and calico at the pre-war rate It is an adal tender of the jungle With a cup of salt a blackthat will net him a considerable assortment of articles in time

The principal natives in the Upper Kasai are the Balubas, who bear the sao The ent The principal tribal mark is the absence of the two upper central incisor teeth These are usually knocked out in early boyhood No Baluba canspace in histhe the ivories Many polish the teeth with a stick and wash their mouths several times a day The same cannot be said of many civilized persons

I observed that the families in the Upper Kasai were ala or Batetela wooes out of the baby business In the region do to see three or four children in a household A woman who bears twins is not only hailed as a real benefactress but the village looks upon the occasion as a good omen