CHAPTER I

FROM THE COAST TO THE SANKURU

We left England on October 1, 1907, and proceeded to Matadi by a vessel belonging to the Compagnie Belge Maritime du Congo. A journey to the mouth of the Congo by one of the three-weekly mail steamers from Antwerp is not one that would be undertaken solely for amusement; a few hours at La Palice (the port of La Rochelle in the Bay of Biscay), Santa Cruz de Teneriffe, Dakar in Senegal, Sierra Leone, and sometimes at Grand Bassam on the French Ivory Coast, are the only breaks in the monotony of a twenty-one days’ voyage, which in itself cannot be expected to be particularly cheerful when one remembers that the majority of the passengers are going out to spend three years’ service as officials or employees of trading companies in one of the most unhealthy climates of the world. As a rule, I believe, the voyage to the Congo is not marked by any particular incident, while the monotony of the journey home is only broken by the temporary gloom cast by the all too frequent burials at sea. Our own journey to Matadi was devoid of any kind of interest, and the days dragged on with painful slowness until, long before any land had appeared in sight, the muddy appearance of our bath water informed us that we were approaching the mouth of the Congo. The great volume of water issuing from the river discolours the sea for many miles, and I am told that the water is quite drinkable at a very considerable distance from land.

There are four ports at which the steamers call in the estuary of the Congo—Banana Point, Boma, Noki, and Matadi. At the first of these our vessel stopped to unload a quantity of cargo for the Dutch House, the oldest of the Congo trading firms, and we spent an hour or two ashore, mainly with the object of exercising the two fox terriers we had brought with us from Europe, exploring the narrow strip of land projecting southwards from the right bank of the river in the form of the fruit from which it takes its name, washed on the one side by the waters of the Congo and on the other by Atlantic surf. There is little to see at Banana, the place consisting solely of the residences of one or two officials, the establishment of the Dutch House, and a sanatorium, whither patients are sent from Boma and Matadi to be braced up by sea air after severe attacks of fever, though the number of mangrove swamps which intersect the narrow promontory do not give it exactly the appearance of a health resort.

At Boma, situated about fifty-five miles further up the river on the right bank, there is more to be seen, but our time was too much occupied in visiting various officials upon business connected with our journey to allow us to take more than a cursory glance at the capital of the Independent State of the Congo, with its shops, its bungalows, and its little steam tramway, emblems of civilisation that we were soon to leave far behind us.

There were formalities to be gone through before we could land our baggage and stores in the country and proceed upon our journey. We had to visit the offices of the État Civile, where we filled up “matriculation” forms dealing with our ages, occupations, and dates of our parents’ birth, and other such matters of great interest to the authorities, and this done we called upon the Vice Governor-General, Monsieur Fuchs, acting in place of the Baron Wahis, who was in Europe. Monsieur Fuchs received us most kindly; he had already been requested from Brussels to do all in his power to help forward our plans, and he readily consented to allow us to introduce into the country sundry prohibited articles, such as arms for an escort, and promised to do his best for us in the matter of granting us permission to shoot game all the year round, to hunt in the reserves, and to shoot elephants. He also told us that, should the necessity arise, we should be provided with an escort of troops, and he informed us that he would issue an order to all the officials in the district of Lualaba-Kasai requesting them to render us all the assistance in their power. The result of our interview with Monsieur Fuchs was that we obtained facilities for collecting natural history specimens which the game laws would otherwise have closed to us, and also our mission was officially recognised by the Government, and we were thus saved endless annoying delays which might have arisen later on if any up-country official had chosen to have doubts as to our _bona fides_.

Having paid our visits to the officials, we partook of tea with Mrs. Underwood, the wife of Messrs. Hatton and Cookson’s agent at Boma. Mr. Underwood, who has recently died upon his return to Europe, had, I think, resided on the Congo longer than any other white man. He was there before the Congo State was founded, and, except for brief periods of leave in Europe, remained there until just before his death in 1910. This gentleman was to arrange for the shipment to England of the many packages for the Museum which we hoped to send down to the coast, and his firm had kindly consented to act as our bankers (for banks did not then exist in the Congo, though I understand one is now to be established), so we had a good deal of business to transact with him before going on board the _Bruxellesville_ for the night.

[Illustration: THE CONGO AT MATADI.]

[Illustration: A STREET IN MATADI.]

Our ship left Boma at dawn on the following day, so we had little or no time to inspect the town. Shortly after leaving the mouth of the Congo, the woods which had clothed the banks, particularly on the south or Portuguese shore, gave place to open, grassy plains, sparsely studded with trees, and low hills began to appear, which, as one draws near to Noki, rise to a considerable height and extend eastwards to the vicinity of Stanley Pool. Noki is a small Portuguese post on the left bank of the river, from which runs a road to San Salvador, an important town in the interior of Angola, and all the mail steamers call there, but as landing has to be effected in boats, and the place possesses nothing of interest, passengers usually remain on board while cargo is discharged. Between Noki and Matadi, the first Congolese post on the left bank of the river, the scenery is extremely fine. The Congo makes a sharp turn to the left at this point, and the stream, flowing through a deep ravine between ranges of rocky hills, is so strong that the bend in the river is known as the Devil’s Cauldron. Foam-crested waves break the surface of the waters, and only by hugging the southern shore can small steamers make headway against the current. The port of Matadi, or “The Stones,” is built, as its name implies, among the rocks on the left bank of the river. It lies just below the cataracts which render the lower Congo impossible for navigation, and just above the frontier between Angola and the Belgian Congo. At Matadi commences the railway to Stanley Pool, so all the merchandise intended for the interior is unloaded there, and there all the produce of the Congo State is shipped. It is a most unprepossessing place. Intensely hot, owing to its rocky surroundings, it is too much enclosed by hills to receive any cooling breezes from the sea, and there are few trees about the place to afford shelter from the scorching rays of the tropical sun. We were compelled to spend three days at Matadi in order to see to the registration of our guns and rifles, all of which have to be stamped with a Government mark by which they could be identified should we, in defiance of the law, sell them to the natives, and to pass our stores through the customs. We had brought with us several cases of whisky and brandy, sufficient to last us as medical comforts for the whole of our two years’ journey. We had had to obtain at Boma special permission to bring this quantity of alcohol into Congolese territory, for the importation of spirits is very strictly limited, each white man being allowed to receive but three litres of alcohol per month, with the double object of checking excessive drinking among the white residents of the interior, and of preventing strong drink from becoming an article of exchange in trading with the natives. At Matadi these regulations do not hold good, and the natives can purchase wine, &c., at the various stores, for in such close proximity to Portuguese territory, where no such regulations exist, it would be quite impossible to prevent the native from obtaining liquor if he required it.

At Matadi we engaged the only “boy,” or personal servant, whom we intended to take with us from the coast, for Torday had determined to recruit our servants from among the uncivilised and simple-minded natives whose country we were to visit, and to have only one or two experienced “boys,” who could turn this raw material into useful servants. We found a native of Loango, by name Balo, who was willing to accompany us. For some reason or other, we gave this man the name of Jones, and Jones he remained until he left us in January 1909. He spoke a little French and a word or two of English in addition to the Chikongo dialect, which is the _lingua franca_ of the Lower Congo, and we found him an invaluable servant during the early part of our journey.

At last all our preparations had been completed and we were free to depart by the next train for Leopoldville. We were only able to take with us a comparatively small amount of personal baggage owing to the high rate of charges for excess baggage on the railway, fifty centimes being charged for every kilogramme over the thirty kilos allowed to each first-class passenger; we therefore arranged for our stores and other heavy baggage to be sent on to us as early as possible by goods train, for we should not need either food-stuffs or camp equipment during the ten days or so we intended to stay on the shores of Stanley Pool. These charges for freight as well as the first-class fare of £8 may sound exorbitant for a journey of only about two hundred and forty miles, but it must be remembered that the railway was enormously expensive to build owing to the mountainous character of the country through which it passes, and travelling at the present rates, high as they are, is far cheaper than was the case before the line was completed, when everything had to be carried up from Matadi by native porters. The cost in life when making the railway was enormous—it is said that every kilometre cost one white man’s life and every metre the life of a native—but the existence of the line has prevented many a death. In the old days the journey on foot to Stanley Pool took a heavy toll of the white men destined for the far interior. The newly appointed State agent or trader’s employee had to march for three weary weeks across a rough and hilly country just after his arrival in Africa, before he had learned to take care of his health in the treacherous Congo climate. He would toil breathless and perspiring to the summit of a hill, and there, in his ignorance, sit down to rest and enjoy the freshness of the breeze, with the result that in many cases he never reached the Pool. Had these hills been situated in the far interior they would have been much less deadly, but lying at the very commencement of the up-country journey they were a veritable death-trap to the inexperienced traveller. The cataracts of the Congo, which render the existence of a railway necessary, are, I presume, too extensive and the volume of water which pours down them far too great to admit of the possibility of engineering skill being able ever to open the whole river to navigation. What a change could be wrought in the opening up of the country if only steamers could ply between Matadi and the Pool! At present every vessel intended for use on the Upper Congo and its mighty tributaries has to be conveyed in small sections at great expense up the railway and fitted together at Leopoldville or Kinshasa, the result being that the cost of even a very small steamer has become enormous by the time it is ready to be used; and at present the possession of a steamer is a necessity to any individual or company desiring to trade in the vicinity of the great waterways, for transport upon State vessels is very costly; accordingly, so much capital is required to start a commercial enterprise in the interior as to put such undertakings quite beyond the reach of the small company or individual trader. But it is not the object of this book to discuss questions relating to the trade in the Congo, so I will return to the narrative of our journey.

The travelling on the Congo railway is by no means luxurious, the train consisting of one first-class carriage capable of seating twelve persons in chairs, placed six on each side of the vehicle, one second-class carriage with open sides suggestive of a cattle truck and filled to overflowing with natives attired in every caricature of European dress, and a baggage van. But any one who has not previously taken the journey can soon forget the discomfort and stuffy heat of the railway carriage as he gazes upon the fine scenery through which he passes or marvels at the triumphs of engineering which the line represents. Shortly after leaving Matadi the train ascends a steep gradient and runs along a narrow ledge, cut out of the hill-side, overhanging the precipitous valley of the Congo, through which the mighty river rushes, turbulent and foam-flecked, from the cataracts to the sea. But one sees little of the Congo from the train, for soon the line leaves the riverside, keeping to the south of the valley, and winds in and out among rocky hills or passes through mile upon mile of dense woodland, a foretaste of the impenetrable fastnesses of the equatorial forest; and only when one reaches the shores of Stanley Pool does one return to the banks of the Congo. The night is spent at Thysville, named after Colonel Thys, the engineer who built the railway. There, there is a very decent hotel, maintained by the railway company, where passengers dine and sleep in comfort. But when once Thysville is passed the traveller has left hotels behind him, for he will find none at Leopoldville or beyond. Thysville lies high, and the night air there is chilly; in fact it strikes one as intensely cold when returning home after a long stay in the great heat of the interior, and in the early mornings as a rule the surrounding hills are obscured by a damp mist which gives the place a distinctly unhealthy appearance. The climate, however, cannot be so bad as one might think, for I believe that the State is about to build a sanatorium there, whither officials who have broken down in health may be sent for a spell of sick leave. Up to Thysville the line rises, but beyond this point it descends to the Pool. Our journey was not marked by any incident worthy of note, excepting that just before arriving at a wayside station our engine refused to face a particularly steep gradient, and we were left waiting on the line for an hour or so while a fresh locomotive was summoned from Thysville, which was, fortunately, not far away. At the numerous little stations natives would come to the train to sell pine-apples and bananas, but these people all belonged to the semi-civilised class of negro who possesses but little interest to any one who wishes to study the African apart from the influence of European manners and customs.

[Illustration: THE CONGO RAILWAY.]

[Illustration: A STOP AT A WAYSIDE STATION.]

At about three in the afternoon of the second day the train drew up at Kinshasa, on the banks of Stanley Pool, and we alighted. We had arranged to be conveyed from Stanley Pool to Dima, the headquarters of the Kasai Company, in one of the company’s steamers, which vessels always stop at Kinshasa to unload their cargo and take up merchandise from the railway, so we did not proceed direct to the rail-head at Leopoldville, but spent a couple of nights in Kinshasa in the house of a Portuguese trader, who lodges such travellers as belong to no company, and therefore have no house to go to, for, as I have said, hotels do not exist in Kinshasa; all the big up-river companies, however, have their forwarding-agents resident there, and these provide lodgings for their other employees journeying to or from the coast. Kinshasa is but a shadow of its former self. At one time a considerable garrison of native troops was kept there, but these were moved on to Leopoldville after an outbreak of sleeping sickness; then extensive plantations of coffee, &c., were made, but for some reason or other they failed to pay and were abandoned, with the result that the once flourishing settlement of Kinshasa has degenerated into a simple post for the despatch by train of rubber and ivory brought from the interior by steamer, with a white population consisting only of one or two officials connected with the customs, who inspect the exports, a missionary, and the above-mentioned forwarding-agents of companies. Its beautiful shady avenues are deserted, most of its neat brick-built bungalows have fallen into decay, and the many acres of plantations are hardly distinguishable from the surrounding bush. The general air of decadence, combined with the clouds of mosquitoes which infest the place, do not make Kinshasa a particularly desirable place to stay in, so we were not sorry to move on to Leopoldville, where we were to make some anthropological measurements while waiting the arrival of our stores from the coast. At Kinshasa we visited the first really native village we had seen in the Congo, a settlement of the Bateke tribe, situated close to the European residents’ houses. These people have been (and I believe still are) most enthusiastic traders, but were not particularly friendly to the white man when Stanley first established the Congo State upon the shores of the Pool. Their village at Kinshasa is extremely pretty, the quaint grass huts scattered about beneath the shade of the palm and baobab trees forming a picture far more pleasing to the eye, if less suggestive of progress, than the groups of mud dwellings built in imitation of Europeans’ bungalows which are to be seen near the wayside stations on the line.

Leopoldville lies upon the shores of Stanley Pool, a few miles to the west of Kinshasa. There are here no hotels, and as the quarters occupied by the agents of Messrs. Hatton & Cookson, who own a considerable trading establishment here, were full up with three Europeans, we were obliged to call upon the Commissioner of the district of Stanley Pool to ask if there was a vacant bungalow in which we could sleep. This gentleman kindly allowed us to occupy two rooms in the buildings used by a company which is building the railway through the Upper Congo to the Great Lakes, situated close to the water’s edge. We took our meals with Messrs. Hatton and Cookson’s agents. Although Leopoldville is so important a place and is surrounded by an enormous native population, the cost of living there is very great, and fresh meat is so difficult to obtain, owing, I believe, to the ravages of the tsetse fly among the cattle which are kept in the neighbourhood, that the white residents are more dependent upon tinned foods imported from Europe than the traders and officials of most of the remote districts of the interior. In addition to the white officers of the garrison and the numerous Government officials resident at Leopoldville, there are a large number of European engineers in the employ of the Government, whose occupation it is to put together the steamers brought up the railway in sections and to repair those which have become damaged in their voyages on the Congo and its tributary streams. The Great Lakes Railway Company has several European employees at Leopoldville, and a number of independent traders (for the most part Portuguese) bring up the number of Europeans in Leopoldville to somewhere about 300. The natives, who inhabit numberless villages in the immediate neighbourhood of the settlement, consist for the most part of retired soldiers, or people who have worked in some other capacity for the white man and who have become, in their own opinion at any rate, too civilised to care to return to their primitive homes in the interior. It would almost appear that Leopoldville is situated too close to the cataracts of the Congo, which commence a mile or two to the west of the town at the point where the river flows out of the Pool, and the long-drawn roar of which is continually in one’s ears in all parts of the settlement; and in order to prevent vessels approaching the quays of Leopoldville, which have taken a course rather too near to the rapids, from being swept by the stream to certain destruction, it is necessary to keep a small but exceedingly powerful steamer always ready to go to the assistance of a vessel which may seem to be unable to make the shore. I will not weary my readers with an account of the work upon which we were engaged during the fortnight or so that we spent at Leopoldville. It consisted almost entirely in making a large number of anthropological measurements, and in photographing types of natives of the many tribes of which representatives are to be found in this great centre of European influence. A large number of the people whom we measured were soldiers. The officer commanding the garrison used to daily send down detachments, which were drawn up in line outside the bungalow in which we lived, and one after another the men came up to have the caliper applied to their heads, and to have their photographs taken. I do not think any of them enjoyed it very much, but small rewards in the shape of tobacco usually sent them away smiling. Although this work has, I believe, proved useful, it was not very interesting to do, and when a telegram arrived from Kinshasa informing us that the Kasai Company’s steamer had arrived and was in readiness to convey us to Dima, we quickly packed our baggage and started off to go on board her, eager to commence our wanderings in the Kasai.

[Illustration: BATEKE VILLAGE, KINSHASA.]

[Illustration: FISHERMEN ON THE CONGO.]

The _Fumu N’Tangu_, “The Chief of the Sun,” an old Chikongo name for the late Herr Greshoff, the Director of the Dutch House, is a stern-wheel steamer, capable of carrying about fifty tons. Upon her upper deck she carries four very small cabins and one rather larger one, in addition to the captain’s cabin at the forward end of the deck. On the lower deck, which, when the steamer is loaded, is but a very few inches above the water, are the engines and a cabin for the engineer. Above the upper deck is a good roof of planks, rendering the use of a topee unnecessary even in the heat of the day. The _Fumu N’Tangu_ draws very little water, as parts of the Kasai abound in shallows during the dry season. We left Kinshasa at six o’clock on a glorious November morning, and headed northwards across the Pool, the course for steamers lying close along the French shore. Owing to the large wooded island known as Bomu, and to the presence of numerous grassy islets and sandbanks, one could get no real view of Stanley Pool from the deck of the steamer; indeed it is only as one approaches the point where the Congo enters it that one gets any idea of the width of the Pool, and even here, as one looks to the southward, one does not see this beautiful stretch of water at its greatest width. From north to south the greatest width is about sixteen miles, and the length of the Pool from east to west about seventeen. In the old days the island of Bomu was a noted haunt of buffaloes, elephants, and numerous herds of hippopotami, but the guns of the Bateke, who shot these animals as food for the white men and the garrison, have long since exterminated them, and save for some crocodiles, and I believe an occasional hippopotamus, the only inhabitants of the island and the sandbanks around it are numerous eagles and waterfowl. On a calm day the waters of Stanley Pool are extremely glassy, notwithstanding the strong stream which flows through it towards the cataracts to the west; but the sudden storms, locally dignified with the name of tornado, which are so frequent in the rainy season, completely change the aspect of the Pool, and not infrequently canoes which are overtaken by them some distance from the shelter of land have the greatest difficulty in reaching a place of safety. The width of the Congo where it flows into Stanley Pool, through a break in a chain of hills some 700 feet high, is about one mile, and as one approaches this point the north shore of the Pool rises abruptly from the water’s edge in the form of white cliffs tinged with red; these are still known as Dover Cliffs, the name given to them by Stanley upon his first descent of the Congo. From Stanley Pool to the mouth of the Kasai the Congo is known as the Channel. In this part of the river there are practically no islands or sandbanks, for the stream runs in a comparatively narrow valley, and is deep; in fact many captains of river steamers will continue their run at night in the channel, a thing which would be impossible among the shallows and sandbanks of the Kasai. The average width of the Congo channel is, I believe, something just under a mile. At first, as one proceeds up the river, its course is bordered on either hand by wooded hills rising abruptly from the water’s edge. These hills are rarely, if ever, more than six or seven hundred feet high, and upon the summits of them the forest gives way to open meadow land or tree-studded bush; but as one nears the mouth of the Kasai, the hills upon the left bank of the Congo gradually decrease in height until just before arriving at Kwamouth, the post at the confluence of the Kasai and the Congo, the river is running through grassy plains dotted here and there with stunted trees. With the exception of a fair number of white-headed eagles, we did not see much of bird life in this part of the river, the absence of sandbanks and islands accounting for the absence of the great masses of wild-fowl which we were to see later in the Kasai. The captain of our ship upon his last voyage had seen some elephants upon the shores of the channel, and one evening when we were moored against the French shore, a native from the coast who was in charge of the fuel supply there told us tales of a wonderful lake some distance to the northward where elephants are still to be seen in countless herds. We also met a Frenchman who had gone to the expense of purchasing a rifle especially for elephant shooting, so we took it that these animals must be fairly common within easy reach of the right bank of the channel.

Along the left bank of the Congo runs the telegraph line, and it spans the mouth of the Kasai raised upon two iron structures, one on each side of the Kasai, somewhat suggestive of the Eiffel Tower, about ninety feet in height. At the post of Kwamouth there are now two white officials connected with the telegraph line, and it is to Kwamouth that one must send if one wishes to despatch a cable to Europe when travelling in the district of the Kasai. Formerly there was a Roman Catholic mission at Kwamouth, but this has been abandoned owing to the ravages of the sleeping sickness.

Though the channel had been in its way beautiful, especially when the various greens of the forest gave place to the purple hues of evening, the journey up the lower Kasai was, to my mind, far more enjoyable. As I have said, the Congo up to Kwamouth had but little to show in the way of animal life, but the Kasai, a little above its mouth, is simply teeming with hippopotami, crocodiles, and innumerable varieties of aquatic and other birds. At the confluence with the Congo the Kasai is only some 500 yards in width, but as one ascends it the river becomes broader, and numerous islands, some covered with forest, others merely clothed in coarse dry grass or reeds, begin to appear. There are some rocks in the bed of the lower Kasai, which cause the captains some little uneasiness in the dry season when the waters are low; in fact our vessel touched lightly upon some of them, when our captain took us hastily to the shore to avoid a tornado. These storms come up very quickly in the rainy season. One sees dark masses of cloud overhanging the river valley in the distance, and one hears a far-off rumble of thunder; in an incredibly short space of time the storm draws near, and one sees a grey mist sweeping down the river towards one, the thunder increasing momentarily in violence until its peals are so frequent as to be almost indistinguishable one from another and to produce one long-drawn roar. Just before the mist reaches one a violent gust of wind strikes the vessel, often sufficient to capsize her should she not have been made fast to the bank, and then the rain, which has appeared like mist in the distance, comes down with a violence seldom, if ever, seen outside the tropics. Fortunately, these storms are usually of brief duration, and pass away as quickly as they come; accidents, however, are sometimes caused by them to the steamers, and our captain had knowingly put his vessel over the rocks, preferring the possibility of sinking close to the shore to the probability of being capsized in mid-stream when the wind struck the vessel.

On the Congo we had seen but few natives; in the Kasai their canoes were far more frequently visible rowing fishermen to and from the sandbanks, where they set their nets and fish-traps. Often they would approach us holding up fish for sale, and occasionally we stopped to purchase it. The purchase of fish by our native crew caused us no little amusement. Money has not yet found its way to the natives of the Kasai, so that everything had to be purchased by exchange. The hard bargaining which an ancient piece of dried fish can produce must be seen to be believed. Cloth, salt, mitakos (_i.e._ brass rods), torn shirts, hats, empty bottles, &c., were all exchanged for the fish, and on one occasion a member of the crew took off the trousers he was wearing and handed them over in exchange for a particularly choice morsel!

In the evenings we would make fast to a grassy island or a sandbank, and all of the crew would go ashore to spend the night. As the vessel slowly approaches to within a yard or two of the shore a man springs overboard from the bows, carrying a light anchor if there are no trees at hand, or a wire rope if there is anything on the shore to attach it to, and in a very short time the vessel is securely moored to the bank; the crew then hasten ashore, carrying with them their bedding, and firebrands from the furnaces (for wood fuel only is used) with which to cook their evening meal. As darkness falls, the scene on shore is very picturesque. In the background the tall rank grass stands motionless in the still air of the African night, while the flickering light of the numerous fires plays upon the small cotton shelters of all colours of the rainbow erected by the crew as a protection against mosquitoes. Meantime pots are on the fire, and the men grouped round them are talking in subdued voices, while a gurgling sound is to be heard as many tobacco pipes, in which the smoke is drawn through water in a calabash under the bow, are passed from man to man, and in the distance one hears the weird grunt of the hippopotamus, mildly indignant at the invasion of his feeding-ground by man. But if the evenings are delightful on a river steamer, the days are no less so, particularly when passing through such stretches of river as that known as Wissman Pool just below the spot where the Kasai receives on its left bank the waters of the Kwango. In Wissman Pool the naturalist, sportsman, or photographer can scarcely allow himself time for meals, so much life is there to be seen, so many chances of a shot, and always the possibility of a sufficiently near approach to a hippo to admit of a snapshot being taken. To any one like myself, whose previous wanderings have mainly been in desert lands, the journey through Wissman Pool must be particularly delightful. The pool is wide, that is to say the course of the river is broken up into innumerable channels between sandbanks and islands, the latter covered with bushes, rank grass, or reeds. The land on either side of the river is flat. On all sides numerous herds of hippopotami were in sight, varying in numbers from three or four to about fifteen. Early in the morning and again in the evening they were to be seen upon the islands, and sometimes even at midday they would be moving about amid the grass or on the sandbanks, while many times we passed close by them as they lay in the water, their ears, eyes, and nostrils only exposed, scarcely heeding the approach of the steamer. Wissman remarks upon the enormous quantity of these great animals in this part of the river, and it is difficult to believe that they can have decreased materially in numbers since his day. Sometimes as the vessel drew near, one of the monsters would slowly rise to his feet in the shallow water in which he had been basking, showing for a moment all his great body as he quietly moved off into deeper water, in which he would disappear, to rise again in a few seconds and gaze at the receding form of the steamer with an air of mild surprise. Crocodiles, too, were very numerous, and whenever we were within reach of the shore I was always momentarily expecting to get a shot at one as he lay asleep with his mouth open beside the water. Torday, too, was at these times ever ready with his shot-gun to bring down a duck or a spur-winged goose for the table, or to shoot a specimen for skinning of one of the many kind of birds with which the islands swarm. Hardy, who does not shoot, found plenty of exercise for his pencil in making hasty sketches, to be worked up later, of the inhabitants, human and otherwise, of the Pool. During our ascent of the Kasai towards Dima we saw no elephants, but these animals are numerous in that country, and upon our return journey in 1909 we got a magnificent view of a herd of six as they slowly retreated from the water’s edge into the long grass at the approach of the steamer.

[Illustration: WISSMANN POOL.]

The country continues to consist of open grass land studded with trees until the mouth of the Kwango is left behind, when the banks become thickly wooded. The Kwango flows into the Kasai between swamps covered with papyrus and reeds, a favourite wallowing-place for buffalo during the fierce heat of the midday sun. Dima lies but eight or nine miles above the confluence, upon the left bank of the Kasai. As the headquarters of the Kasai Company it contains the residence of the director and the general stores, to which all trade goods are brought upon their arrival from Europe, and where they are sorted before being distributed among the factories, each factory receiving such goods as are most saleable in its locality. Here, too, are the workshops wherein the steamers of the company are repaired. There is, therefore, always a fair number of European residents in Dima. The director has a couple of secretaries, the accountant’s office occupies several clerks, the transport of the trade goods requires the services of two or three white men, while the workshops are looked after by quite a staff of European engineers. In addition to this, there are nearly always several people staying temporarily in Dima, for every new agent of the company goes to headquarters on his arrival in Africa to be appointed to a factory, and every agent calls at Dima on his way home. The situation of Dima does not at first sight strike one as being particularly desirable, for the post is built in a clearing of the dense forest, and the banks of the river are by no means high; but it would be difficult to find an equally convenient spot for the transport of trade goods and the reception of the rubber and ivory collected in the district. A great deal of produce comes from the basin of the Kwilu River, a tributary of the Kwango, of which I shall have more to say later on, so that it would take a considerable time to get this produce far up the Kasai, where the current is very strong and the speed of the steamer low, should the headquarters of the company be moved higher up the river to a more healthy locality, such, for instance, as Pangu, near the mouth of the Lubue River, where the Kasai Company has recently founded a hospital. Dima itself, as we saw it in 1909, was a far more agreeable post than when we stayed there in November 1907. Upon our arrival only the houses of the director and the chief engineer, the two mess-rooms, the accountant’s office, and the stores were of brick, but upon our return we found that all the old plaster houses, with their thatched roofs, had given way to neat structures, roofed with tiles, and built of locally made bricks. The clearing, too, in which the post is situated had been considerably extended, and this has had the effect of rendering the place far more airy, and lessening the oppressive heat; and better drainage of the swampy ground in the neighbouring forest has led to a great reduction in the numbers of the mosquitoes, which were quite as numerous as we cared about when we arrived in Dima. The varied kinds of work, from the mending of machinery to the wheeling of small barrow-loads of bricks, naturally necessitates the employment of natives of many grades of civilisation. All the native clerks and most of the mechanics and carpenters come from the coast, the majority of them from Sierra Leone, Lagos, or Accra. These gentlemen are very far up in the social scale, and their costumes on Sunday are, as a rule, neat and in good taste. Next in magnificence to them come the civilised Congo natives, not infrequently retired soldiers who have attained the rank of sergeant or corporal; the costumes of these, though very spotless on the Sabbath, will sometimes be marred by the presence of some incongruous article, such, for example, as a long drooping feather in the side of a straw hat. These people are usually employed as headmen in charge of a certain number of labourers. Then come the “boys,” or white men’s personal servants, and the “civilised” workmen who have received some teaching at a mission. The appearance of such people when attired in their best is strongly suggestive of a rainbow, and the various garments which compose their costumes are just those which would _not_ be worn at the same time by any but an African negro whose “civilisation” has just brought him to the wearing of trousers and whose wage will allow him to indulge the savage’s craving for brilliant colours. The fourth class of native employee at Dima is composed of the man who has recently joined the company’s services and adheres to the loin-cloth, and the little boy who, by no means overdressed, is commencing his career by wheeling small barrow-loads of earth to the brick-makers. Nearly, if not quite all of the inhabitants of the workmen’s village in Dima profess some form of Christianity. The majority of the Kasai district natives working there come from the Sankuru or upper Kasai, originating from the country around the Lusambo and Luebo. When an agent from up the river is told to enlist a certain number of men for service at Dima, he naturally does not suggest to his best and most willing workmen that they should go; he tries to get rid of the worst men he has got, therefore one finds at Dima representatives of many different tribes, often men who have made their villages too hot to hold them, and have thus been obliged to earn a livelihood as workmen in one of the company’s factories, from which they have been drafted as undesirable. Thus the vices of many tribes are to be found among the native inhabitants of Dima and the virtues of but few. This it appears is specially the case among the “boys” who offer themselves for service to the new-comer from Europe. Some of these have very likely been dismissed for theft, idleness, or general incompetence, and are working at Dima until they can get another job; others, good enough boys in the bush, have been left at Dima when their masters have gone home, and have preferred to stay there in the hope of finding another employer to returning to their native villages, for which they have often conceived a feeling of contempt. These latter have usually suffered by contact with the low-class workman referred to above, and it is a very risky thing to engage one of them as a servant for the journey up country. We took no servants from Dima, though many such offered themselves, but were content with two boys who had come with us until we could get some absolutely uncivilised and unspoilt youths whom we could train ourselves. At the time of our arrival in Dima the workmen from the coast received their pay in Congolese coin, but the natives were paid in trade goods, money being as yet without value in the district. An attempt to introduce coin is being made now in two or three of the larger centres of the Kasai district, such as Lusambo and, I believe, Luebo, and the Kasai Company now pays all its people in Dima in money; the company’s stores being open daily to supply the workmen with such articles for exchange with the local natives as they may wish to buy. The large number of people permanently resident in Dima necessitates the importation of a considerable quantity of food-stuffs from a distance, the local Baboma not producing sufficient to supply the post; every ten days, therefore, a steamer ascends the Kwilu as far as the post of Kikwit with trade goods for the factories on that river, and returns laden with manioc flour, maize, plantains, live chickens, and goats from that land of plenty, the country near Luano. There is a farm a mile or two east of Dima which produces some vegetables, and where a few cows and a small flock of sheep are kept under the superintendence of a European farmer; as yet, however, it is rather an experiment to ascertain what can be grown and reared in the neighbourhood than an attempt to supply Dima with the necessaries of life. Should it ever be able to provide all that Dima wants, the agricultural people of the Kwilu will lose a very considerable trade.

A certain amount of sport is to be obtained near Dima; in 1907 I shot a harnessed bush-buck in a small clearing in the forest less than half-an-hour’s walk from the post, while in January 1909 I saw an elephant’s spoor very little further away, and spent a day hunting buffalo without success in the papyrus swamps towards the mouth of the Kwango. The animals were in the swamps right enough, but I made too much noise wading and slipping about upon the papyrus trampled down by the buffalo to get a shot. These swamps were alive with mosquitoes, and altogether were by no means an ideal hunting-ground. At one time a native hunter was employed to shoot buffalo for the white men’s mess, but this seems to have caused very little reduction in their numbers.

Of our doings at Dima there is little to tell; we were anxious to get to work on the Sankuru River, but were compelled to await the arrival of our provisions from the coast. In the meantime Torday put in a little ethnographical work among the Baboma, purchased a number of articles of their manufacture, and, making as many inquiries as possible among the white men as to the conditions prevailing in the country we proposed to visit, he formed his plans definitely for the first six months or so of our journey. We were to proceed up the Kasai and Sankuru rivers as far as Batempa, a little above Lusambo, whence we were to go further inland to the Lubefu River, there to study a portion of the Batetela tribe. After this we were to descend the Sankuru and visit the Bushongo people, commonly but erroneously termed the Bakuba, who bade fair to prove of exceptional interest, to judge by several magnificent pieces of their wood-carving which we saw in Dima.

This work, we anticipated, would occupy us about six months, at the end of which time Hardy was to leave us for England. As a matter of fact, the study of the Batetela on the Lubefu led us to continue our work among the sub-tribes of that people in the equatorial forest after Hardy had departed, and the success which attended Torday’s work among the eastern Bushongo induced him to visit the capital of their king, so that our stay in the region of the Sankuru was extended to fourteen months instead of the six in which we had expected to complete our work.

We heard in Dima that there lived near the Kasai Company’s factory of Mokunji, close to the Lubefu River, a deposed Batetela chief, who was a remarkably intelligent native and very well disposed towards the European. In the hope of obtaining some valuable information from this man, Torday decided to proceed to Mokunji as directly as possible.

We left Dima early in the morning of December 2, 1907, on board the Kasai Company’s steamer _Velde_. This little vessel contained accommodation for no one excepting her captain and European engineer, so that we were obliged to pitch our tents every evening upon the river bank or upon an island. This necessitated the captain terminating his day’s run sufficiently early to enable us to encamp by daylight, and also considerably delayed the steamer’s start in the mornings. The voyage, therefore, occupied more time than is usually taken over the journey to Batempa, and it was only upon the twenty-third day after our start from Dima that we reached the end of our voyage. The upper deck of the _Velde_ was very small, there being only just sufficient room for the five of us to sit around a table for meals, so that our journey cannot be said to have been a very luxurious one, but the glorious river scenery and the numberless interesting sights which nature had to offer in the way of birds and beasts combined to make the voyage pleasant. Just above Dima the Kasai is only about half a mile in width and very deep, with a strong current. Further on, however, between the factory of Eolo and the Government post of Basongo, near the confluence of the Kasai and the Sankuru, the river often attains a width of fully three miles, and its course is much broken by sandbanks and islands, its depth being reduced in proportion to the greater width of its bed. Although the shores of the river are usually clothed in forest, undulating grassy downs are to be seen behind the belt of woodland that borders the stream, and only after entering the Sankuru does one reach a real forest country. Upon its right bank the Kasai receives no tributaries of any importance, for the Lukenye River flows parallel to it into Lac Leopold II., about fifty miles to the north; but upon its left or southern bank it receives the waters of the Kancha, Lubue, and Loange rivers, rising in the uplands of the Congo-Angola frontier, as well as numerous small streams. There is a Kasai Company’s factory at Eolo, and some plantations of rubber belonging to the Société Anonyme Belge at a spot called Mangay, about fifty miles farther up the river, also on its left bank. At the mouth of the Lubue there is a factory of the Kasai Company, whence communication is kept open by means of a whale-boat with the company’s post of Dumba on the Lubue, which we visited during the last part of our journey. The company has recently founded a hospital for its white and native employees on the high bank of the Kasai near the mouth of the Lubue, but the building of this post had not been commenced at the end of 1907. The only Government station on the Kasai is the post of Basongo. We spent one night here, and were told by Lieutenant Le Grand that the Bashilele people who inhabited the country to the south of his post were a most warlike and hostile people; indeed he gave us a number of arrows which had been shot at him and his soldiers during a few days’ journey he had just undertaken in the interior. We were to make acquaintance ourselves later on with the Bashilele, as my narrative will show.

[Illustration: OPEN COUNTRY BESIDE THE KASAI.]

[Illustration: MANGAY.]

During our journey up the Kasai the captain of the _Velde_ told us that about the year 1904 or 1905 a very deadly epidemic had broken out among the hippopotami of that river and the Sankuru. So great had been the mortality among the animals (which even now exist in the middle Kasai in almost as great numbers as in Wissman Pool) that the factories on the bank had been obliged to employ men with canoes to push out into the current the carcases which had lodged on the shore close at hand, the stench from which, as they began to decay, had been appalling. I could gather no information as to the nature of this disease.

When we entered the Sankuru the river banks became more densely wooded, and the patches of open grass land visible in the background rarer and more rare. The river is narrower than the Kasai, seldom exceeding about a mile in width, and the foliage on the banks rises abruptly from the water’s edge, forming solid walls of luxuriant vegetation. This kind of scenery, although undoubtedly beautiful, is very apt to become monotonous, so that we were always glad when a call at one of the factories, of which there are about eight below Lusambo, broke the dulness of a voyage through the forest. Of course there was always plenty to look at; for, in addition to animal life, canoes of native fishermen were ever to be seen darting in and out of the almost invisible openings in the vegetation, making the entrance to the little harbours where are kept the canoes of the villages, which as a rule are situated some little way inland. But we were eager to begin our work in earnest, and naturally chafed at our enforced inactivity upon the steamer. In addition to the delay of which the pitching and striking of our camp was the cause, our progress was retarded by the lack of prepared fuel on the banks. Wood only is burned on the steamers, and the Kasai Company has established posts all along the river, at each of which about half-a-dozen natives are employed in felling trees and cutting the wood into suitable lengths for the furnaces of the vessels. As these men are under no supervision they by no means overwork themselves, with the result that one often finds very little wood ready when the steamer calls; consequently the voyage has frequently to be interrupted while the crew cut wood in the forest or on the shore. We were, I believe, exceptionally unlucky in finding so little wood prepared, and our stoppages were therefore more frequent than is usual. We paid a brief visit to the English mission at Inkongu, a few miles below Lusambo, where Mr. Westcott is doing a very good work, strictly undenominational, among the natives, and at Lusambo itself, the centre of government of the district of Lualaba-Kasai. We found that Commandant Gustin, the commissioner, was absent upon a tour of inspection, but we were received by the deputy-commissioner, Commandant Saut. On hearing that our destination was the Lubefu River, this gentleman informed us that he was expecting a caravan to arrive with rubber from that river, and that he had no doubt the men would be glad to earn an additional wage instead of returning without loads to their homes. He therefore promised to send them on to us at Batempa, where we agreed to await their arrival.

Just as our steamer was leaving we received a message from the magistrate who resides at Lusambo, strongly advising us to abandon our journey to Mokunji, for he had heard that there was considerable unrest and anti-European feeling among the Batetela villages that lay upon the road, and he was of the opinion that we should not reach the Lubefu without being attacked. We thanked the magistrate for his friendly warning, but we had come too far to abandon our journey at the first rumour of trouble, and we continued our voyage to Ikoka, a factory between Lusambo and Batempa, fully determined to try our best to reach our destination, Mokunji.