Part 21 (1/2)

Alhted, ithin hailing distance of the post An American voice with a Cleveland, Ohio, accent called out to ive you three copies of the _Saturday Evening Post_ if you will take us down to Dima We have been stranded here for nearly three weeks and want to go home”

I yelled back that they were more than welcome for I not only wanted to help out a pair of countrymen in distress but I desired some companionshi+p on the boat They were Charles H Davis and Henry Fairbairn, both Forola diaian boat had passed since their arrival and it was so croith Belgian officials on their way to Matadi to catch the August steamer for Europe, that there was no accommodation for them By this time they were joined by a companion in misfortune, an American missionary, the Rev Roy Fields Cleveland, as attached to the Mission at Luebo He had coo on the littleto take the Belgian State boat Like the engineers, he could get no passage

Davis showed his appreciation ofover the three copies of the Post, which were hts in the field

Cleveland did his bit in the way of gratitude by providing hot griddle cakes every ht his native servant how to produce the real article

At Died to take the ”Fuu,” a sister shi+p of the ”Madeleine,” from this point to Kinshassa When I arrived I found that she was stuck on a sandbank one hundred ainst tiust steamer would have been futile if I could not push on to Kinshassa at once

Happily, the ”Yser,” the State boat that had left Davis, Fairbairn, and Cleveland high and dry at Basongo, had put in at Dima the day before to repair a broken paddle-wheel and was about to start I beat the ”Madeleine's” gangplank to the shore and tore over to the Captain of the ”Yser” When I told hio to Kinshassa he said, ”I cannot take you I only have acco forty”

I flashed ot the sofa, or rather the bench called a sofa, in his cabin

On the ”Yser” I found Mr and Mrs Charles L Crane, both Southerners, ere returning to the United States after eight years at service at one of the American Presbyterian Mission Stations With theo The eldest girl, as five years old, could only speak the Baluba language Fro the proble a word of English It was quaintly a to hear her jabber with the wood-boys and the firees where we stopped

[Illustration: THE PARK AT BOMA]

[Illustration: A STREET IN MATADI]

The Cranes were splendid types of the American missionary workers for they were human and companionable I had found Cleveland of the saainst the foreign church worker before I went to Africa I left with a strong admiration for hiood to , but I did not tarry long I was relieved to find that I was in aust steamer at Matadi It was at Kinshassa that I learned of the noh the neasafter I reached Stanley Pool I boarded a special car on the historic narrow-gauge railway that runs frolad to meet Major and Mrs Wallace, who like myself were bound for home I invited them to share my car and we pulled out On this railway, as on all other Congo lines, the passengers provide their own food The Wallaces had their servant whonized as one of the staff at Alberta Nelson still held the fort for me Between us we ht at one of the ht at the hotel at Thysville high in thecold This place is named for General Albert Thys, as attached to the colonial adnie du Congo Pour le Coer,” as it is called, of all the Congo co o Matadi-Stanley Pool He felt with Stanley that there could be no developo without a railway between Matadi and Stanley Pool

The necessity was apparent At Matadi, which is about a hundred o River ceases because here begins a succession of cataracts that extend almost as far as Leopoldville In the old days all merchandise had to be carried in sixty-pound loads to Stanley Pool on the heads of natives The way is hard for it is up and down hill and traverses swamps and morasses Every year ten thousand men literally died in their tracks The huer loss of ti leadershi+p of General Thys, the railas started in 1890 and was opened for traffic eight and a half years later

Perhaps no railway in the world took such heavy toll It is two hundred and fifty th and every kilometer cost a white life and every raves of the whites areprocession of headstones along the right of way

During its construction the project was bitterly assailed The wiseacres contended that it was visionary, impracticable, and impossible In this respect it suffered the sa African railways and especially those of Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Uganda, and the Soudan

The scenery between Thysville and Matadi is noble and inspiring The track winds through gri lovely valleys The hills are rich with colour, and occasionally you can see a frightened antelope scurrying into cover in the woods As you approach Matadi the landscape takes on a new and e from a curve in the mountains and the little town so intimately linked with Stanley's early trials as civilizer, lies before you