An African Adventure Part 12

Not all my fellow pa.s.sengers were desirable companions. At Bukana five naked savages, all chained together 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 tribesmen back in the jungle last week and they are going down the river to be tried." These were the first eaters of human flesh that I saw in the Congo. One conspicuous detail was their teeth which were all filed down to sharp points. I later discovered that these wolf teeth, as they might be called, are common to all the Congo cannibals. The punishment for cannibalism is death, although every native, whatever his offence, is given a trial by the Belgian authorities.

So far as employing the white man as an article of diet is concerned, cannibalism has ceased in the Congo. Some of the tribes, however, still regard 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 human body has long been regarded 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 missionaries protested against the barbarous performance they were invariably met with this reply, "You eat fowl and goats and we eat men.

What is the difference?" There seems to have been a particular lure in what the native designated 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 transmit the knowledge and courage of its former owner. There was also a tradition that once having eaten the heart of the white, no harm could come to the barbarian who performed this amiable act. Although 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 must live with them to catch the magic. 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 elements of mystery with their suggestion of wild bird and beast that lurk everywhere at night, be reproduced. Life flows on like a moving dream that is exotic, enervating, yet intoxicating.

Accustomed as I was to dense populations, the loneliness of the Lualaba was weird and haunting. On the Mississippi, Ohio, and Hudson rivers in America and on the Seine, the Thames, and the Spree in Europe, you see congested human life and hear a vast din. In Africa, and with the possible exception of some parts of the Nile, Nature reigns with almost undisputed sway. Settlements appear at rare intervals. You only encounter an occasional native canoe. The steamers frequently tie up at night at some sand-bank and you fall asleep invested by an uncanny silence.

I spent six days on the Lualaba where we made many stops to take on and put off freight. 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 kins.h.i.+p with themselves.

At Kabalo I touched the war zone. This post marks the beginning of 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 German East Africa.

When the Great War broke out the Belgian Colonial Government held that the Berlin Treaty of 1885, ent.i.tled "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 made it an international and peaceful area under Belgian sovereignty.

Following their usual fas.h.i.+on the Germans looked upon this doc.u.ment as a "sc.r.a.p of paper" and attached Lukuga. This forced the Belgian Congo into the conflict. About 20,000 native troops were mobilized and under the command of General Tambeur, who is now Vice-Governor General of the Katanga, co-operated with the British throughout the entire East African campaign. The Belgians captured Tabora, one of the German strongholds, 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 from England, sank a German gunboat and disabled another, thus purging those waters of the German.

The lake was of great strategic 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 with wooded heights and is navigable throughout its entire length of four hundred miles. Ujiji, on its eastern sh.o.r.e, is the memorable spot where Stanley found Livingstone. The house where the ill.u.s.trious missionary lived still stands, and is an object of veneration both for black and white visitors.

From Kabalo I proceeded to Kongolo, where navigation on the Lualaba temporarily ends. It is the usual Congo 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 the morning I 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 Mohammedans and wear turbans and long flowing robes. Their cleanliness is in sharp contrast with the lack of sanitary precautions observed by the average unclothed native. The only blacks who wash every day in the Congo are those who live on the rivers. The favorite method of cleansing in the bush country is to sc.r.a.pe off a week's or a month's acc.u.mulation of mud with a stick or a piece of gla.s.s.

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 must admit that I have had greater 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 Kibombo the train stopped for the mail. When I got out to stretch my legs 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 came toward me smiling and said, "The Minister of the Colonies was through here yesterday in a special train and he said that an American journalist was following close behind, so I came down to see you." The man proved to be J. G. Campbell, who had come to install an American cotton gin nine kilometers from where we were standing. His wife was with him and she was the only white woman within two hundred miles.

Campbell is a link with one of the new Congo industries, which is cotton cultivation. The whole area between Kongolo and Stanleyville, three-fourths of which is one vast tropical forest, has immense stretches ideally adapted for cotton growing. The Belgian Government has laid out experimental plantations and they are thriving. In 1919 four thousand acres were cultivated in the Manyema district, six thousand in the Sankuru-Kasai region, and six hundred in the Lomami territory.

Altogether the Colony produced 6,000,000 pounds of the raw staple in 1920 and some of it was grown by natives who are being taught 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 important factor in the development of the Congo. It shows that the ruthless exploitation of the earlier days is succeeded by scientific and constructive expansion.

Campbell's experience in setting up his American gin discloses the princ.i.p.al need of the Congo today which is adequate transport. Between its arrival at the mouth of the Congo River and Kibombo the ma.s.s of machinery was trans-s.h.i.+pped exactly four times, alternately changing 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 merchandise must be moved by man power--the average load is sixty pounds--through the greater part of its journey.

Late in the afternoon of the day which marked the encounter with the Campbells I reached Kindu, where navigation on the Lualaba is resumed again. By this time you will have realized something of the difficulty of travelling in this part of the world. It was my third change since Bukama and more were to come before I reached the Lower Congo.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 whom I had a letter of introduction, and who was making a tour of inspection of the Congo. He had landed at Momba.s.sa, crossed British East Africa, visited the new Belgian possessions of Urundi and Ruanda which are spoils of war, and made his way to Kabalo from Lake Tanganyika. He asked me to accompany him to Stanleyville as his guest. I gladly 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 musty bureaucrat, as so many are, he is a live, alert progressive man of affairs who played a big part in the late war. To begin with, he is one of the foremost admiralty lawyers of Europe. When the Germans occupied Belgium he at once became conspicuous. He resisted the Teutonic scheme to separate the French and Flemish sections of the ravaged country.

After the investment of Antwerp, his native place, accompanied by the Burgomaster and the Spanish Minister, he went to the German Headquarters and made the arrangement by which the city was saved from destruction by bombardment. He delayed this parley sufficiently to enable the Belgian 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 n.o.ble exile of Monsieur Max, the heroic Burgomaster of Brussels.

I now became an annex of what amounted to a royal progress. To the Belgian colonial official and to the native, Franck incarnated a sort of All Highest. In the Congo all functionaries are called "Bula Matadi,"

which means "The Rock Breaker." It is the name originally bestowed on Stanley when he dynamited a road through the rocks of the Lower Congo.

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.

The Minister, his military aide, secretary and doctor filled the cabins, so I slept in a tent set up on the lower deck.

With flags flying and thousands of natives on the sh.o.r.e yelling and beating tom-toms, we started down the Lualaba. The country between Kindu and Ponthierville, our first objective, is thickly populated and important settlements dot the banks. Wherever we stopped the native troops were turned out and there were long speeches of welcome from the local dignitaries. Franck shook as many black and white hands as an American Presidential candidate would in a swing around the circle. I accompanied him ash.o.r.e on all of these state visits and it gave me an excellent opportunity to see the many types of natives in their Sunday clothes, which largely consist of no clothes at all. This applies especially to the female s.e.x, which in the Congo reverses Kipling's theory because they are less deadly than the male.

At Lowa occurred a significant episode. This place is the center of an immense native population, but there is only one white resident, the usual Belgium state official. We climbed the hill to his house, where thirty of the leading chiefs, wearing the tin medal which the Belgian Government gives them, shook hands with the Minister. The ranking chief, distinguished by the extraordinary amount of red mud in his wool and the grotesque devices cut with a knife on his body, made a long speech in which he became rather excited. When the agent translated this in French to Franck I gathered that the people were indignant over the advance in cost of trade goods, especially salt and calico. Salt is more valuable than gold in the Congo. Among the natives it is legal tender for every commodity from a handkerchief to a wife.

Franck made a little speech in French in reply--it was translated by the interpreter--in which he said that the Great War had increased the price of everything. We shook hands all round and there was much muttering of "yambo," the word for "greeting," and headed for the boat.

Halfway down the hill we heard shouting and hissing. We stopped and looked back. On the crest were a thousand native women, jeering, hooting, and pointing their fingers at the Minister, who immediately asked the cause of the demonstration. When the agent called for an explanation a big black woman said:

"Ask the 'Bula Matadi' why the franc buys so little now? We only get a few goods for a big lot of money."

I had gone into the wilds to escape from economic unrest and all the confusion that has followed in its wake, yet here in the heart of Central Africa, I found our old friend the High Cost of Living working overtime and provoking a spirited protest from primitive savages! It proves that there is neither caste, creed nor colour-line in the pocket-book. Like indigestion, to repeat Mr. Pinero, it is the universal leveller of all ranks.

IV

On this trip Franck outlined to me his whole colonial creed. It was a gorgeous June morning and we had just left a particularly picturesque Arabized village behind us. Hundreds of natives had come out to welcome the Minister in canoes. They sang songs and played their crude musical instruments as they swept alongside our boat. We now sat on the upper deck and watched the unending panorama of palm trees with here and there a clump of gra.s.s huts.

"All colonial development is a chain which is no stronger than its weakest link and that is the native," said the Minister. "As you build the native, so do you build the whole colonial structure. Hence the importance of a high moral standard. You must conform to the native's traditions, mentality and temperament. Give him a technical education something like that afforded by Booker Was.h.i.+ngton's Tuskegee Inst.i.tute.

Show him how to use his hands. He will then become efficient and therefore contented. It is a mistake to teach him a European language. I prefer him to be a first-cla.s.s African rather than third-cla.s.s European.

"The hope of the Congo lies in industrialization on the one hand, and the creation of new wealth on the other. By new wealth I mean such new crops as cotton and a larger exploitation of such old products as rice and palm fruit. Rubber has become a second industry although the cultivated plantations are in part taking the place of the old wild forests. The subst.i.tute for rubber as the first product of the land is the fruit of the oil palm tree. This will be the industrial staple of the Congo. I believe, however, that in time cotton can be produced in large commercial quant.i.ties over a wide area."

Franck now turned to a subject which reflects his courage and progressiveness. He said, "There is a strong tendency in other Colonies to give too large a place to State enterprise. The result of this system is that officers are burdened with an impossible task. They must look after the railways, steamers, mills, and a variety of tasks for which they often lack the technical knowledge.

"I have made it a point to give first place to private enterprise and to transfer those activities formerly under State rule to autonomous enterprises in which the State has an interest. They are run by business men along business lines as business inst.i.tutions. The State's princ.i.p.al function in them is to protect the native employes. The gold mines at Kilo are an example. They are still owned by the State but are worked by a private company whose directors have full powers. The reason why the State does not part with its owners.h.i.+p of these mines is that it does not want a rush of gold-seekers. History has proved that in a country with a primitive population a gold rush is a dangerous and destructive thing.

"We are always free traders in Belgium and we are glad to welcome any foreign capital to the Congo. We have already had the constructive influence of American capital in the diamond fields and we will be glad to have more."

The average man thinks that the Congo and concessions are practically synonymous terms. In the Leopold day this was true but there is a new deal now. Let Monsieur Franck explain it:

"There was a time when huge concessions were freely given in the Congo.

They were then necessary because the Colony was new, the country unknown, and the financial risk large. Now that the economic possibilities of the region are realized it is not desirable to grant any more large concessions. It is proved that these concessions are really a handicap rather than a help to a young land. The wise procedure is to have a definite agricultural or industrial aim in mind, and then pick the locality for exploitation, whether it is gold, cotton, copper or palm fruit."

"What is the future of the Congo?" I asked.

"The Congo is now entering upon a big era of development," was the answer. "If the Great War had not intervened it would have been well under way. Despite the invasion of Belgium, the practical paralysis of our home industry, and the fact that many of our Congo officials and their most highly trained natives were off fighting the Germans in East Africa, the Colony more than held its own during those terrible years.

In building the new Congo we are going to profit by the example of other countries and capitalize their knowledge and experience of tropical hygiene. We propose to combat sleeping sickness, for example, with an agency similar to your Rockefeller Inst.i.tute of Research in New York.

"The Congo is bound to become one of the great centers of the world supply. The Katanga is not only a huge copper area but it has immense stores of coal, tin, zinc and other valuable commodities. Our diamond fields have scarcely been sc.r.a.ped, while the agricultural possibilities of hundreds of thousands of square miles are unlimited.

"The great need of the Congo is transport. We are increasing our river fleets and we propose to introduce on them a type of barge similar to that used on the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers.

"An imposing program of railway expansion is blocked out. For one thing we expect to run a railway from the Katanga copper belt straight across country to Kinsha.s.sa on the Lower Congo. It is already surveyed. This will tap a thickly populated region and enable the diamond mines of the Kasai to get the labour they need so sorely. The Robert Williams railway through Angola will be another addition to our transportation facilities. One of the richest regions of the Congo is the north-eastern section. The gold mines at Kilo are now only accessible by river. We plan to join them up with the railway to be built from Stanleyville to the Soudan border. This will link the Congo River and the Nile. With our railroads as with our industrial enterprises, we stick to private owners.h.i.+p and operation with the State as a partner.

"The new provinces of Ruanda and Urundi will contribute much to our future prosperity. They add millions of acres to our territory and 3,000,000 healthy and prosperous natives to our population. These new possessions have two distinct advantages. One is that they provide an invigorating health resort which will be to the Central Congo what the Katanga is to the Southern. The other is that, being an immense cattle country--there is a head of live stock for every native--we will be able to secure fresh meat and dairy products, which are sorely needed.

"The Congo is not only the economic hope of Belgium but it is teaching the Belgian capitalist to think in broad terms. Henceforth the business man of all countries must regard the universe as his field. As a practical commercial proposition it pays, both with nations as with individuals. We have found that the possession of the Congo, huge as it is, and difficult for a country like ours to develop, is a stimulating thing. It is quickening our enterprise and widening our world view."

It would be difficult to find a more practical or comprehensive colonial program. It eliminates that bane of over-seas administration, red tape, and it puts the task of empire-building squarely up to the business man who is the best qualified for the work. I am quite certain that the advent of Monsieur Franck into office, and particularly his trip to the Congo, mean the beginning of an epoch of real and permanent exploitation in the Congo.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE Ma.s.sIVE BANGALAS]