TESTIMONY OF TRAVELLERS AND THINKERS
(_Concluded_)
Among the denunciators of the Congo Administration a prominent place
must be assigned to
DR. H. GRATTAN GUINNESS
(_English_)
a part medical, part missionary, wholly illogical perverter of
facts. The plunges made by this eccentric individual into the
depths of human credulity would certainly receive no attention in
this place but for the strange circumstance that some people have
actually so far belied their intelligence as to accept them without
investigation. Strange to relate, Mr. Booker Washington (a singular
lapse of sagacity in a man so generally intelligent) is among those
whose credulity has been abused by stories of strings of Negroes’
hands being set to dry in the sun, the said hands having been cut off
from natives by wicked European officials of the Congo Administration
as a punishment for failure to collect a sufficiency of rubber, etc.
In the course of a recent lecture in Scotland, Dr. Guinness said: “To
our knowledge the natives never mutilated their victims by cutting
off their hands. The wild Ngombe never practised the mutilation
referred to. It was reserved for civilisation to introduce this
certificate of death.”
Now it is a matter of history, quite outside the realms of argument,
that punishment by bodily mutilation has been practised by natives of
Central Africa from the earliest times of which we have any record.
Here is a sentence taken from a book entitled _The First Christian
Mission on the Congo_, published before the Congo State came into
existence, written by Mrs. H. Grattan Guinness:
From half a million to a million of lives are annually sacrificed
in the slave trade, and as many more in all probability in
intertribal wars and contests. Physically a land of sunshine and
beauty and redundant life, it is spiritually a land of darkness,
_deformity_, and death.
This evidence, _given by the wife of Dr. Grattan Guinness in 1882_,
is a strange foundation for Dr. Guinness to erect his 1904 statement
upon. Let us hear what other people have to say upon this subject.
COMMANDER LOVETT CAMERON
(_English_)
In Ouroua only two punishments are known, mutilation and the
penalty of death. Both are much in use, but _especially the
former_. For the least offence the chief and his lieutenants cut
off a finger, a lip, a portion of the ear or of the nose. For more
serious offences, they cut off the hands, etc.
DR. WILLIAM JUNKER
(_German_)
Mazindeh wished to punish the man according to A-Zandeh law _by
cutting off a finger_.... I saw a man who had been punished by the
loss of _his finger and of another important member_. A Malingdeh
told me he knew about twenty men who had been similarly punished.
SIR JOHN KIRK
(_English_)
If slavery were abolished, all criminals would probably be put to
death or _mutilated_.
CARDINAL LAVIGERIE
(_Belgian_)
King Wemba, near Tanganyika, finding the wooden drumsticks too
harsh for his ears, cut off the hands of his slaves so that they
might beat the drums with their stumps.
MR. J. A. MALONEY
(_English_)
The offender was lucky if he escaped with instant death, for Msiri
delighted in diabolical refinements of cruelty. Quite minor crimes
were punished by _the lopping off of a hand_ or the docking of an
ear. In fact Msiri practised mutilation almost as extensively as
Kasongo.
MR. FREDERICK STANLEY ARNOT
(_English_)
Mr. Giraud noticed some men whose noses or ears had been cut off.
Mkewe’s six drummers had a thumb on each hand _but no fingers_....
Mr. Giraud says that everywhere the Bemba people practise these
barbarous customs. First the fingers and toes are cut off.
[Illustration: The Station at Bumba.]
These quotations will surely prove that bodily mutilation is
essentially an African barbarity that prevailed more or less
among all the tribes of the Congo region, but is now almost entirely
suppressed, thanks to Belgian civilisation. The charge brought by Dr.
Grattan Guinness against that civilisation, that it introduced and
practises this certificate of death, is a libel so monstrous that it
carries with it its own refutation.
MR. GRENFELL
(_English Missionary_)
The welcome that I have received and the facilities accorded me
everywhere in the course of my journey through the Eastern Province
have made this journey very agreeable. This is now the third day
that I have received the hospitality of this post, and before
leaving it, which I expect to do to-morrow morning, I consider
that I must write and tell you how happy I have been to have had
the opportunity of making this most interesting journey. In the
course of my tour I have been much struck by the order which has
been established, and by the real progress accomplished. When the
position of the country under the Arab domination is recalled, and
when the relatively brief number of years since the termination of
the military operations rendered necessary by the revolts is taken
into account, the progress that has been made is nothing less than
marvellous. If in spite of such numerous difficulties so much has
been done, I am sure that when the railway towards Ponthierville
has been completed the progress will prove more rapid still.—_May
31, 1903._
MR. WILLIAM FORFEIT
(_English Baptist Missionary_)
We arrived to-day at New Antwerp in order to take our farewell
before leaving for England. I much regret that we are not able
to see you. I desire to thank you for the kind interest and
consideration for the mission at Upoto which you[47] have always
displayed.
The condition of the natives is much improved, all the villages
of the district can be visited in absolute safety, and I beg to
congratulate you on the tranquillity of the district of which you
are the Commissary-General.—_March 14, 1903._
MESSRS. ASCENSO AND POLIDORI
(_Italian Physicians_)
The dwellings for soldiers and labourers are numerous in Kabinda.
They are symmetrically arranged and separated from one another
by wide alleys from 10 to 15 metres across. Each black family
has a separate house sufficiently large, divided into two rooms.
Each dwelling is raised half a metre (nearly 20 inches) above the
ground, and surrounded by a verandah one metre broad. The soil
has been well beaten down, and the walls are whitened with lime.
The roofing is without a ceiling, with a large opening admitting
ventilation; each man sleeps on a bed raised one metre. The ground
surrounding the post is formed into separate small gardens in which
each soldier cultivates maize, manioc, etc.
All the villages around Kabinda are united to the post by wide and
long avenues, well kept up and bordered by trees and pineapples.
The natives greatly feel the effects of the neighbourhood of the
white man, and make every effort to rival him in the maintenance,
cleanliness, and prettiness of their villages. The houses are
placed on an elevation, and are built in the same way as those of
the soldiers with truly remarkable care and propriety. Each house
has two or three rooms containing from 12 to 15 cubic metres, with
good verandahs, and meets the prescribed hygienic conditions.
Large free intervals separate the dwellings from one another, and
in them are the vegetable plantations.
A detail worthy of being pointed out is the great cleanliness of
the natives of this region. During the course of my journey from
the West Coast of Africa to Kabinda I remarked many things, and I
ascertained that at Kabinda all the natives, in place of sleeping
on the ground, have a raised bed, formed by means of flexible canes
with coverlets, stuffs, and mosquito nets. There are houses that
contain magnificent sarcophagi of truly artistic work.
Everywhere there are small pieces of furniture coarsely sculptured,
but which reveal the artistic taste of this people and their
progressive march towards civilisation. It must also be said that
they have a marked desire to dress decently. In conclusion, they
are, in my opinion, the first people I met in Africa who, without
being spoilt by money, possess a relatively advanced degree of
civilisation, and an hygienic system beyond dispute.
The fertility of the soil and the abundance of provisions of all
kinds allow of changing the food of the soldier and the native.
Their food generally consists of chickens, goats, wild animals,
manioc, maize, vegetables, and various fruits. They feel the
effects of this good nourishment. They are strong, robust, support
fatigue well, and consequently give little hold to sickness.
On a hill close to the post a hospital has been constructed by the
natives. It contains three large rooms separated from each other
and containing 100 cubic metres.—_February 21, 1904._
MR. MAGUIRE
(_English Missionary_)
Though I have travelled by boat and on foot from Boma to Amadi and
higher up to Surunga, calling at all the State stations; though I
have visited many establishments, both Catholic and non-Catholic,
as well as some stations of independent companies; though I have
passed nights and days in my tent in the forest and in villages of
the natives; though I have had ample opportunities of seeing much
in my journeys as to how the natives are treated, I have never
seen or heard of any of the atrocities with which the agents
of the Free State are charged. On the contrary, one cannot but
admire the wonderful progress that has been made in so short a
time, the commendable way in which the natives are treated, the
little work that is exacted of them, and the manner in which they
are punctually paid for every service rendered or work done. The
little work which is occasionally exacted of them by way of tax in
porterage or otherwise is as nothing when compared with the immense
benefits conferred upon them by the State. In fact the methods of
the Belgian officers drew a highly complimentary eulogium from
the Sirdar during his recent visit to the Enclave of Lado—methods
which, he stated, might be followed with advantage by our English
officers: “Messieurs,” said the Sirdar, “nous avons d’excellentes
leçons devant nos yeux.”—_March 31, 1904._
DR. CHRISTY
(_English Physician_)
I went to the Congo last September as a member of an expedition of
the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, which was despatched
especially to investigate sleeping sickness in the Congo, the same
disease which so recently, as the public know, broke out in such
virulent epidemic form in Uganda. For a considerable time I was in
Leopoldville, which is the Bombay of the Congo—that is, everybody
throughout the whole of the Congo goes through Leopoldville in
order to reach Europe and the outer world. Hence you can quite
understand that any one, like myself, for instance, stationed for
a time in Leopoldville, must, if he take any trouble at all, come
across all the officials from the whole of the Congo, who, from
various causes, are bound at intervals to be in or passing through
Leopoldville. Thus, whilst there I had excellent opportunities of
finding out exactly what happens in that country, particularly
as these men—that is, the officials of the Congo—are extremely
ready to talk. Besides opportunities of acquiring information in
that way, I have travelled on foot in the Belgian Congo State,
and personally observed the condition of things which prevails
there. I assure you that if I were to tell you all I know against
the Congo Administration it would amount to a very little indeed
compared with what I know in its favour. The credulousness of the
British Government in respect of the Casement report is something
marvellous. Casement travelled up the river in a missionary
steamer, arm in arm with missionaries practically all the time,
and obtained all his information from the river bank instead
of personally investigating the various stories of outrage and
mutilation which he received. It is the most astonishing thing
that the British Government have given the Casement report so much
credence.
The agitation now going on with respect to atrocities in the Congo
is based on things that happened a long time ago. There is no doubt
that in times gone by atrocities have occurred; but, thanks to the
altered methods and conditions of administration, such things are
not likely to recur. The basin of the Congo, mainly the Belgian
Congo, is practically the sole rubber-producing area of the world.
This territory also contains the lowest class of natives in the
whole of Africa. The natives all over the East Coast—the Masai,
the Nandi, the Kaverondo, the Bukedi, the Baris, the Madis, the
Dinkas, the Shiluks, and others—stretching right away up to the
Soudan, are all a magnificent class of Negro, a fighting people,
a manly, upstanding people, who impressed me immensely. I have
been through parts of all their territories, and they are indeed a
magnificent set of people. Then you get towards the West Coast—the
basin of the Niger, where I was for nearly two years, and you see
a lower class of natives. On the Benue, where the present punitive
expedition is operating in Niaiger, you have again a distinctly
lower class of natives. Then, as you go farther South, and get into
the Congo watershed, you come upon a still lower class of natives.
The natives over large areas in the Congo are cannibals to the
present day. They are a very low class of native indeed. That is
the territory which the Belgians have so successfully opened up
for the rubber trade. In that opening-up process they have had,
as I say, to contend with absolutely the lowest class of natives
in Africa at the present day. As you travel through the Congo you
cannot help feeling—at all events any one like myself, who has been
through the British tropical colonies—that the amount of general
advancement and civilisation in the Congo Free State is far ahead
as compared with our own. This is doubtless owing to the fact
that the Belgians have made the natives work. The Belgians have
gone on the principle, to begin with, that the native must be a
participating element in the development and civilisation of the
country—that is, that he must work with and for the white man, and
thereby benefit not only the white man but himself. I was immensely
impressed with the state of government and the advancement and
general opening-up of the Congo, the more so as I can compare it
with other districts under British control in which I have been. We
do not attempt to make the native work, with the result that we do
not get the benefit we should from our Protectorates. Uganda and
British East Africa are far behind the Congo Free State. Not more
than a third of Uganda is opened up to administrative control. I
once spent ten months in Uganda, and visited every station in it,
walking 2300 miles and returning down the Nile. The Belgians have
got stations everywhere in the Congo practically, and most of the
natives, except in one or two areas, are entirely under control.
The Uganda native is a fat, lazy chap, who will do no work. There
is no industry in Uganda. The Belgians pay the Congo natives for
their labour. They realise that the native is a valuable asset in
the country, and treat him accordingly. It is surely obvious that
it is not to the interest of the Congo administrators to maim the
native.
All the mutilations and cruelties which have been spoken of took
place in the early days of the opening-up process to which the
country has been subjected and before the railway was constructed.
The men who have been guilty of the atrocities have not been
Belgians in all cases. In many instances they have been Italians
who have been appointed to the smaller outlying posts, the better
and higher positions being kept for Belgians. These Italians and
other foreigners who have been given the charge of outlying
stations have in some cases perpetrated cruelties in times gone by.
These men were not accustomed to exercise power, and this led them
to ill-use the natives. That is how the atrocities such as these
were originated. But that has all gone now; they are all cleared
out. I have seen nineteen such men, chiefly Italians, in prison
at Boma on charges of cruelty, which proves that the Belgians are
doing their best to put a stop to the kind of thing complained of.
The agitation that is now going on about atrocities is exaggerated
out of all proportion to the amount of the atrocities that
happened at any time. The Belgians are doing everything they can
to supersede the men who have acted improperly in the past; they
have appointed inspectors for different districts, and they have
allowed inspectors appointed by the Italian Government and the
Scandinavian Government to go out into the Congo for the purpose of
keeping an eye on those of their own nationality in positions of
responsibility and control in the Congo Free State. Things in the
Congo now are very different to what they were even two or three
years ago. The King of the Belgians has sent out Baron Dhanis—who
had more to do with opening up the Congo in the early days than
anybody else—to reorganise the whole military system of the Congo
Free State. There are to be two or three large military centres
in the Congo, and the soldiers will be much more highly trained
and be more under control. Hitherto the small posts have recruited
men from the surrounding villages, and given them a bit of uniform
and a rifle, and they have gone about, supposed to be doing their
duty, instead of which they have probably been ill-treating the
natives. The whole thing will be changed now, however, for they
will have a much more highly organised army and a much higher class
of officer. It has been these unscrupulous foreigners—Italians,
etc.—who have been guilty of the cruelties reported. Another proof
of the endeavours to stop any existing abuses of administration is
the fact that a Belgian officer who for many years held a high post
in the Congo has recently been sent out by the King as Royal High
Commissioner, to investigate all questions of maladministration
and, particularly, payment of State employees and the natives for
labour, with power there and then to rectify or alter any existing
rules which he thinks might be amended in any part of the Congo,
the territories of concessionary companies included. With regard to
the mutilations in the Congo, described by Mr. Casement, I may tell
you that only last year in Uganda I saw similar mutilations, which,
it is well known, were done by the natives in Uganda, notably in
King Mtesa’s day. In walking through Toro and Unyoro, I have seen
men without noses, ears, and, frequently, without hands.
With regard to Lord Cromer’s assertion that in the Lado Enclave the
natives have left the banks of the river and the immediate regions
of the Belgian posts,—well, I have walked along the Nile from the
Albert Nyanza into the Soudan, and visited the Belgian stations on
the river, besides having seen a good deal of the natives on both
banks. I feel sure that Lord Cromer is wrong when he states that
the natives are leaving the Belgian side and going over to the
Uganda side. The natives certainly had nothing to complain of, and
certainly are not migrating across the river. As for there being
no villages round Lado Enclave, the explanation is that there is
for several months of the year absolutely no water and, therefore,
necessarily no villages. But at many other places along the banks
in the Lado Enclave there are large villages. I saw several
thousand natives at Wadelai, employed by the Belgians in rebuilding
the old fort of Emin Pasha, preparatory to making a large station
there, and they seemed quite contented and happy, and worked like a
hive of bees. The conclusion to which I am irresistibly driven as
a disinterested observer is that the present administration of the
Congo is not only free from cruelties, but is of the most complete
and efficient description, and counts for the fullest commercial
and industrial development of the Free State. I am sure that that
administration is doing its level best in every way, from the
highest to the lowest officer, to make the country prosperous, and
the native happy and useful.—_June 23, 1904._
[Illustration: Convent of Franciscans of St. Gabriel of the Falls
(Oriental Province).]
MR. GREY
(_English Civil Engineer_)
_From the “Morning Post” (London), January 20, 1903._
Since I returned to England a few weeks ago I have read some
correspondence in the _Morning Post_ on the subject of the
administration in the Congo State. I am an Englishman, and have
during the last two years led an expedition of the Tanganyika
Concessions (Limited), organised in Rhodesia to explore and search
for minerals in the Katanga district of the Congo State. During
the latter part of 1901 and the whole of 1902 sections of this
expedition have explored and settled in the district of Katanga,
and at the same time the representatives of the Special Katanga
Committee have occupied and governed the country. It is almost
impossible for one man to have intimate knowledge of more than a
portion of the territory of the Congo Free State, and I can only
claim to know a small and remote section. Still, seeing that so
much attention has been directed of late to Belgian administration
in the Congo, my experiences in that country may be of interest.
It is, perhaps, necessary to explain that the Special Katanga
Committee, the governing body in Brussels of the territories of
Katanga, is composed of the representatives of an amalgamation
between the separate interests of the Congo Free State Government
and the Katanga Company. The former originally owned two-thirds,
the latter one-third, of that portion of the Congo State. This
administration is entirely Belgian, and the African staff is
composed of a representative of the committee, whose headquarters
are at Lukonzolwa, on Lake Mweru, and who occupies the position of
administrator, and of numerous officials, civil and military, in
charge of the various sections of the district and departments of
the administration. The country is garrisoned by a large force of
native troops, with European officers. My duties have confined me
to the section of the district called the Upper Luapula Section,
which borders on the south and east with Northern Rhodesia. I
have visited the chief of that section, Mr. Vervloet, at his
headquarters at Lukafu, and an officer of the Katanga force with a
few soldiers has been attached to my expedition.
I have, therefore, had considerable opportunity on the spot of
learning the instructions which the Special Committee give their
officials, and how those instructions are carried out. I myself
and many members of my expedition have become fairly intimate with
the native inhabitants of large portions of this district, and
have from time to time employed as carriers and miners several
hundred labourers. That the natives of this country had never
suffered ill-treatment from white men was evident to me from the
time I entered the country. They showed no hesitation in working
for my expedition and in bringing quantities of food to sell, and
always seemed quite confident that fair payment would be given,
both for labour and food. I have lived for many years in parts of
Africa in which the native inhabitants were for the first time
coming under the influence of European government, and where
conditions rendered the aid of such government by native troops
necessary. It is almost impossible constantly to restrain the
tendency to oppress and ill-treat his less powerful countrymen
which is inherent in the native soldier, and I do not believe
that it ever happens that the advent of that form of government
is unaccompanied by acts of injustice and oppression. Generally
there is a constant effort on the part of the European officer to
prevent such acts and punish offenders. My experience is that this
is especially the case in the district of Katanga. The regulations
of the Special Committee provide that no armed parties of soldiers
should travel or patrol without a European officer. Native soldiers
are not allowed to enter villages alone, and weekly markets are
held at which a European official buys food for his soldiers from
the neighbouring villages, so endeavouring to do away as far as
possible with direct dealing between the soldier and the people.
My experience of the last two years has convinced me that in the
district of Katanga at any rate the Belgian officials endeavour to
treat the Central African native with justice and leniency, and in
as great a degree as officials of any other nation look on him
as a human being, with a perfect right to sell his labour and his
food on terms satisfactory to himself. When I first entered the
Congo, at the time that the officials of the Special Committee
were establishing their government, and before I had come into
personal contact with them, I found some armed natives who posed
as soldiers of the Belgian Government, and who lived more or less
the life of robbers, raiding and stealing wherever they went. The
natives believed that these men were the authorised police of the
European Administration, whose white officials they had not yet
seen, and members of my expedition reported to me on the shocking
behaviour of the Belgian Askari. I later learnt the complete
mistake we had made in believing these men to be Government
employees. In a short time they completely disappeared, caught or
driven out by the agents of the committee. The Ba-Luba and Wasanga,
the tribes we have been working among, are, we find, a peaceable,
industrious race, with practically no warlike propensity, an easy
prey to any organised hostile force. I am led to believe that
their numbers have decreased during the last fifty years owing
to a continuous traffic in slaves with the Arabs of the East and
Mambunda of the West. To-day the slave trade has ceased in this
particular district, the traders being afraid to come anywhere
near the Belgian posts. To such an extent have conditions changed
with the advent of Belgian administration that many small chiefs
are now recovering individuals raided from them by their stronger
neighbours and not already sold to the traders when European
control reached the country.
In all discussions and criticism of the mistakes made by European
administration in Central Africa there is one condition which seems
to me to be never taken into account. That is the necessity of
employing officials who have to spend a long time learning how to
do efficiently the work that they have to carry on from the day
they arrive at their posts. There is no school in which to learn
Central African Civil Service except Central Africa, and it is
impossible in Africa to obtain a sufficient number of qualified
officials. Not many go to Central Africa with the idea of making
their permanent homes there. It has been my own good fortune to
settle in a healthy part of Central Africa, but from my knowledge
of the Continent as a whole, I think it is not an exaggeration
to state that two-thirds of the officials who leave Europe are,
within five years of their arrival, either killed by the climate,
invalided home, or have left the country at the termination
of an agreement. All these have to be constantly replaced by
inexperienced men, with their job to learn. What wonder then that
grievous mistakes are sometimes made by some of these untried
men, necessarily placed in responsible positions? In writing this
letter to you, I state only my own experience and opinion of
the spirit and effect of Belgian administration in the district
of Katanga; but it seems natural to me to suppose that the same
spirit extends throughout the whole of the Congo territory; and
it seems almost the duty, at the present time, of any Englishman
who has had opportunity to judge of the general methods of Belgian
administration to give publicity to his knowledge.—Yours, etc.,
G. GREY.
[Sidenote: Cardinal Gibbons Speaks out.]
In presence of testimony such as this, it is not matter for surprise
that His Eminence, Cardinal Gibbons, should have characterised as
inopportune the consideration by the recent Peace Congress at Boston
of the oft-refuted accusations brought against the Congo Free State.
Where not absolutely false in every particular (as the majority
of these slanderous stories most certainly are), they are grossly
exaggerated, distorted out of all resemblance to the events they are
based upon, and mendaciously attributed to a Government that has
consistently and unswervingly repressed wrongdoing, of whatever kind,
or by whomsoever done, and brought the light of civilisation to a
vast barbarian population more thoroughly and in less time than was
ever done before.
The opinion of Cardinal Gibbons upon this point well appears in a
letter addressed by His Eminence to the Honorary Secretary of the
Congo Reform Association, of which the following is the full text.
HIS EMINENCE, CARDINAL GIBBONS
(_American_)
BALTIMORE, Oct. 21, 1904.
_The Honorary Secretary,
Congo Reform Association._
SIR,—I avail myself of the first opportunity which has presented
itself to acknowledge your letter of the 18th instant. In that
letter you call my attention to certain resolutions adopted by the
Peace Congress at Boston. I fail to see in these resolutions any
vote of censure upon the Congo Free State. They express rather a
desire for information in regard to the international status of
that State.
It appears that those who voted for the resolutions were in need
of enlightenment on the subject, but this information lies near
at hand. There is no need to appeal to any tribunal. Diplomatic
history, diplomatic correspondence concerning the Independent State
of the Congo, and the acts and the protocols of the Conference
of Berlin, as well as of the Conference of Brussels, all prove
conclusively that the Congo Free State is an independent sovereign
State, and that the powers have no right of guardianship or
intervention.
Your letter also refers to certain documents, such as the British
Parliamentary White Book, Africa, No. 7 (1904), which, however, has
not escaped my attention. Permit me to say that this book, instead
of proving your contention, proves the exact contrary, and shows
that both the administration and the courts of the Congo are using
their endeavours to correct such evils as may exist—for no human
government is perfect.
The interpellation in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, to
which you refer, seems to have been simply a fruitless attempt
on the part of the Socialist leader to annoy the Government. The
very fact that the Chamber considered Mr. Vandervelde’s charges
against the Congo, and refused to sympathise with him in his views,
is in itself a significant indication of the baselessness of his
accusations.
In your letter you are also pleased to say that in speaking in
defence of the Congo Government I have spoken “unwittingly,” and
to imply that I have not considered the facts nor weighed the
evidence. I can assure you that I have not spoken without due
consideration. As to the evidence, it is overwhelmingly against
your contention.
It is only some score of discontented men, depending largely on
the untrustworthy hearsay evidence of natives, who have raised an
outcry against the Congo Administration, out of a great band of 500
or 600 missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, who are working
on the Congo, and who give thanks to the Congo Administration for
its support to the missions, and for its successful efforts to
introduce Christianity and civilisation into Central Africa.
Overwhelming evidence in favour of the Congo Government has been
given recently by missionaries and by travellers, and it is not
only Catholic missionaries, like Monsignor Van Ronslé and Father
Van Hencxthoven, who have spoken in praise of the State, but also
the most distinguished Protestant missionaries, such as the Rev.
Mr. Bentley and Dr. Grenfell.
As it is not likely that you will convert me, and as I see no
probability of convincing you, I, for my part, think it best to
consider the correspondence closed.
Very sincerely yours,
(Signed) JAMES, CARDINAL GIBBONS.
_Viscount Mountmorres_
In the summer of 1904, an Irish peer, Lord Mountmorres, began a
journey through the Congo Free State, whence his lordship is sending
an admirable series of letters, descriptive of his experiences and
impressions, to the London _Globe_. The dismal scenes of torture,
desolation, and death, in which the missionary-agents of the
Liverpool merchants assure us that unhappy country abounds, appear
in some way to have escaped the observation of this traveller. “The
further one goes into the interior the more civilised one finds it,
the better organised, and the more developed,” says Lord Mountmorres
at the opening of his second letter:
I was utterly unprepared [he continues] for what I found at Irebu
and at Coquilhatville, buried away there on the equator in the
very heart of the great forest. For what are these stations? Large
haphazard jumbles of native dwellings and white men’s bungalows
in an arid clearing, with ill-kempt roadways, such as one would
find in the Western States? No; here we have great open towns of
really artistic brick houses, with palm-thatched roofs and wide
verandahs, each standing in its own little garden, bright with
roses and hibiscus, Spanish iris and flamboyants, and set well back
along straight, wide avenues shaded by bamboos, mangoes, papayes,
acacias, bread-fruit trees, or one of a dozen other leafy and
ornamental equatorial trees. In spacious grounds will be found the
residence of the local governor, _chef-de-poste_, or commandant,
as the case may be, with its twenty to thirty-foot verandah and
its flagstaff in front, placed usually so as to command the full
view of the river front. Round one or more spacious squares at
the intersections of the principal avenues will be the various
public offices—the Directorate of Transports, the Post Office,
the Magasins de l’État, the headquarters of the Force Publique,
the Office of Agriculture, and the rest. At Bikoro there are 2200
acres overlooking the lovely Lac Tumba, sometimes miscalled Man
Tumba or M’Tumba, a corruption of Mai Na Tumba, water (or lake) of
war. Round Coquilhatville there are little short of 4500 acres of
these plantations, and round Irebu and Imesse something like 1200
acres in each case. Then near to each station will be the extensive
market gardens, where every manner of vegetable, both European and
tropical, is raised in profusion, and also the large, well-kept
farm or farms, which supply the principal officials with beef and
mutton, goat and pork, poultry and ducks, and in which a ceaseless
series of experiments in breeding and raising stock adapted to the
climate is carried on.
And this has been achieved not in one isolated spot near the coast,
where material and transport were ready to hand, but at every
“white post” up here in the very heart of the black continent, cut
off until a few years ago from the capital and the seaboard by that
deadly, costly barrier—the white man’s cemetery of the Cataract
caravan road. How has it been done? Let us take Irebu as a typical
case. Seven years ago a young Belgian lieutenant, Jeuniaux by name,
was sent out to take charge of the military training camp at the
junction of the Ubanghi, the Congo, and the Tumba Canal, on the
site of a former larger and flourishing native village. He came,
and he found an unhealthy and pestilential swamp covered with the
ruins and the filth of the then almost deserted village of Irebu.
Among these unpleasant surroundings was a large group of ill-kempt
and badly constructed mud and thatch huts—the training camp; and
here he was doomed to pass at least three years. But he was young
and energetic, and had passed unscathed along the latter half of
the caravan road in the cataract district, for the railway was then
but half completed. He had seen brick houses in other stations, and
clean, well-kept, well-arranged little townships. He would have
the same. But his first difficulty was that this was a training
camp, whither the raw, untutored savage was drafted in his naked
ignorance to undergo six months’ tuition only; and, so soon as he
had acquired a sufficient training to make him of use to the white
man, he was hurried on elsewhere and a new batch of raw material
took his place. Jeuniaux had but a hazy notion of architecture,
but, unaided, he planned and designed his barracks, and acted as
his own foreman, devising quaint methods to construct weather-proof
walls and roofs from the materials at hand, and instructing his
workers, man by man, in these methods, and that without even the
medium of a common language.
At last his barracks were built, and the old huts destroyed;
coffee, cocoa, maize, sweet potatoes, and bananas grew in
well-ordered plantations, between parallel, palm-lined avenues,
where formerly had been a wilderness of insanitary ruins. Then
came the great feat of all—brick houses for the whites and for the
Departmental offices. Bricks, bricks. He knew that bricks were
made somehow from some sort of clay, and he had a hazy notion
that straw was essential to their composition. So he started on
a series of experiments. In the intervals of his work—with two
sub-lieutenants to help him, he was responsible for training,
feeding, and controlling from 1000 to 1500 soldiers, with their
wives and families, for maintaining order in his district, and
developing its commercial resources, and for ruling the natives in
it; how well he had done this work I will show in a moment—but,
in the intervals, he went on clay-hunting expeditions, and then
sat up at night experimenting on what he had found, and at last he
produced what he recognised as the real red brick—the philosopher’s
stone of his research. And so the first brick house in Irebu was
built in one year from when Jeuniaux first came. And he built other
houses for his lieutenants and white non-coms., and a residency for
himself, and a guest house large and comfortable, and post-office,
state stores, guard-house, pharmacy, armoury, and houses for all
the other whites. One by one they were built, and Jeuniaux, now
Commandant Jeuniaux, and his ever-changing pupils built them all,
until he had realised his ambition, and had constructed a model
station, with its lovely avenues, its riverside promenade, its
fine landing-stage, its parade ground, where 1200 men may, without
crowding, manœuvre in companies at once, and its pretty public
gardens. And when his first term of three years was over he left,
with the sense of work accomplished, for his six months’ holiday.
All the time in Europe he pictured the growth of his plantations
and his palms, and told his friends he should be glad to get back
“home” to Irebu, the town he built with his own hands. And the
night before he reached it he could not sleep for excitement; and
all day he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of it, and at last
it came in sight. But not the Irebu he knew. The plantations had
reverted into jungle, the avenues had disappeared, lost in the
quick, rank growth; the pleasure gardens were a wilderness; the
finest of the palms had been cut down; and he went through the
coarse, wild vegetation that clogged the entrance to his house, and
into the damp hall-way that was become the home of bats, and of
rats, and of lizards, and he sat down there, and he wept. For so,
in six short months, had an idle officer left in charge during his
absence undone the labour of three years.
But he is not a man to be easily daunted. To-day Irebu is as spick
and span and as beautiful as he first conceived it. The benefit
that accrues to the natives as well as to the whites from so
well-built and arranged a station is shown by the change that has
occurred in the health of Irebu. One of Jeuniaux’s first cares
was to make the place sanitary. Now, since he built the station,
_i. e._, in the five years since summer, 1899, there have been
only two deaths among the whites,—although their number has been
increased,—and of these one was a case of sunstroke, the other
one probably of deliberate intent to die by disobeying orders
during an illness on receipt of bad news. Since 1901 there has
not been one death among Europeans. The mortality rate among the
soldiers has decreased to 14 per 1000 average, and for the current
year to 12 per 1000, or a fraction under. And this despite the
fact that the sudden change in their mode of life when they enter
military service must be a severe strain on the recruits, and also
that Irebu, lying at the junction of waterways, is constantly
having dumped down in it cases of infectious diseases, which are
discovered on the river steamers, and which are put ashore at the
nearest station.
Now, I mention all this about the building of Irebu, not simply
to glorify Commandant Jeuniaux, but because the work that has
been done there, the difficulties he has had to contend with and
has overcome, the result that has been achieved, are identical
with what every commandant has met with in each of the beautiful
stations that you will find in the Middle Congo. Each of these
represents the personal exertion of one individual, and their
existence is eloquent testimony to the ability and devotion with
which the State is served by its servants.
_Mrs. M. French Sheldon_
Mrs. French Sheldon, the traveller and author, returned to Europe in
December, 1904, after a tour through the Congo Free State.
I have witnessed [she says] more atrocities in London streets
than I have seen in the Congo, which remark applies to the rubber
country as well as the rest of the State. I travelled through
every part of the country, and am convinced that the allegations
of maladministration are groundless. Wherever I went I found
the natives treated with kindness and consideration, while the
improvements in the condition of the land and its inhabitants are
almost incredible.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] The Commissary-General of New Antwerp.