civilization utterly alters it, it must always be a monument to his
courage, and as you travel farther and see the difficulties placed
in his way, your admiration increases. There are men here who make
little of what Stanley accomplished; but they are men who seldom
leave their own compound, and, who, when they do go up the river,
travel at ease, not in a canoe, or on foot through the jungle, but
in the smoking-room of the steamer and in a first-class railroad
carriage. That they are able so to travel is due to the man they
would belittle. The nickname given to Stanley by the natives is
to-day the nickname of the government. Matadi means rock. When
Stanley reached the town of Matadi, which is surrounded entirely by
rock, he began with dynamite to blast roads for his caravan. The
natives called him Bula Matadi, the Breaker of Rocks, and, as in
those days he was the Government, the Law, and the Prophets, Bula
Matadi, who then was the white man who governed, now signifies the
white man's government. But it is a very different government, and a
very different white man. With the natives the word is universal.
They say "Bula Matadi wood post." "Not traders' chop, Bula Matadi's
chop." "Him no missionary steamer, him Bula Matadi steamer."
The town of Matadi is of importance as the place where, owing to the
rapids, passengers and cargoes are reshipped on the railroad to the
_haut Congo_. It is a railroad terminus only, and it looks it. The
railroad station and store-houses are close to the river bank, and,
spread over several acres of cinders, are the railroad yard and
machine shops. Above those buildings of hot corrugated zinc and the
black soil rises a great rock. It is not so large as Gibraltar, or
so high as the Flatiron Building, but it is a little more steep than
either. Three narrow streets lead to its top. They are of flat
stones, with cement gutters. The stones radiate the heat of stove
lids. They are worn to a mirror-like smoothness, and from their
surface the sun strikes between your eyes, at the pit of your
stomach, and the soles of your mosquito boots. The three streets
lead to a parade ground no larger than and as bare as a brickyard.
It is surrounded by the buildings of Bula Matadi, the post-office,
the custom-house, the barracks, and the Café Franco-Belge. It has a
tableland fifty yards wide of yellow clay so beaten by thousands of
naked feet, so baked by the heat, that it is as hard as a brass
shield. Other tablelands may be higher, but this is the one nearest
the sun. You cross it wearily, in short rushes, with your heart in
your throat, and seeking shade, as a man crossing the zone of fire
seeks cover from the bullets. When you reach the cool, dirty
custom-house, with walls two feet thick, you congratulate yourself
on your escape; you look back into the blaze of the flaming plaza
and wonder if you have the courage to return.
[Illustration: Bush Boys in the Plaza at Matadi Seeking Shade.]
At the custom-house I paid duty on articles I could not possibly
have bought anywhere in the Congo, as, for instance, a tent and a
folding-bed, and for a license to carry arms. A young man with a
hammer and tiny branding irons beat little stars and the number of
my license to _porter d'armes_ on the stock of each weapon. Without
permission of Bula Matadi on leaving the Congo, one can not sell his
guns, or give them away. This is a precaution to prevent weapons
falling into the hands of the native. For some reason a native with
a gun alarms Bula Matadi. Just on the other bank of the river the
French, who do not seem to fear the black brother, sell him
flint-lock rifles, as many as his heart desires.
On the steamer there was a mild young missionary coming out, for the
first time, to whom some unobserving friend had given a fox-terrier.
The young man did not care for the dog. He had never owned a dog,
and did not know what to do with this one. Her name was "Fanny,"
and only by the efforts of all on board did she reach the Congo
alive. There was no one, from the butcher to the captain, including
the passengers, who had not shielded Fanny from the cold, and later
from the sun, fed her, bathed her, forced medicine down her throat,
and raced her up and down the spar deck. Consequently we all knew
Fanny, and it was a great shock when from the custom-house I saw her
running around the blazing parade ground, her eyes filled with fear
and "lost dog" written all over her, from her drooping tongue to her
drooping tail. Captain Burton and I called "Fanny," and, not seeking
suicide for ourselves, sent half a dozen black boys to catch her.
But Fanny never liked her black uncles; on the steamer the Kroo boys
learned to give her the length of her chain, and so we were forced
to plunge to her rescue into the valley of heat. Perhaps she thought
we were again going to lock her up on the steamer, or perhaps that
it was a friendly game, for she ran from us as fast as from the
black boys. In Matadi no one ever had crossed the parade ground
except at a funeral march, and the spectacle of two large white
men playing tag with a small fox-terrier attracted an immense
audience. The officials and clerks left work and peered between the
iron-barred windows, the "prisoners" in chains ceased breaking rock
and stared dumbly from the barracks, the black "sentries" shrieked
and gesticulated, the naked bush boys, in from a long caravan
journey, rose from the side of their burdens and commented upon our
manoeuvres in gloomy, guttural tones. I suspect they thought we
wanted Fanny for "chop." Finally Fanny ran into the legs of a German
trader, who grabbed her by the neck and held her up to us.
"You want him? Hey?" he shouted.
"Ay, man," gasped Burton, now quite purple, "did you think we were
trying to amuse the dog?"
I made a leash of my belt, and the captain returned to the ship
dragging his prisoner after him. An hour later I met the youthful
missionary leading Fanny by a rope.
"I must tell you about Fanny," he cried. "After I took her to the
Mission I forgot to tie her up--as I suppose I should have done--and
she ran away. But, would you believe it, she found her way straight
back to the ship. Was it not intelligent of her?"
I was too far gone with apoplexy, heat prostration, and sunstroke to
make any answer, at least one that I could make to a missionary.
The next morning Fanny, the young missionary, and I left for
Leopoldville on the railroad. It is a narrow-gauge railroad built
near Matadi through the solid rock and later twisting and turning so
often that at many places one can see the track on three different
levels. It is not a State road, but was built and is owned by a
Dutch company, and, except that it charges exorbitant rates and does
not keep its carriages clean, it is well run, and the road-bed is
excellent. But it runs a passenger train only three times a week,
and though the distance is so short, and though the train starts at
6:30 in the morning, it does not get you to Leopoldville the same
day. Instead, you must rest over night at Thysville and start at
seven the next morning. That afternoon at three you reach
Leopoldville. For the two hundred and fifty miles the fare is two
hundred francs, and one is limited to sixty pounds of luggage. That
was the weight allowed by the Japanese to each war correspondent,
and as they gave us six months in Tokio in which to do nothing else
but weigh our equipment, I left Matadi without a penalty. Had my
luggage exceeded the limit, for each extra pound I would have had to
pay the company ten cents. To the Belgian officers and agents who go
for three years to serve the State in the bush the regulation is
especially harsh, and in a company so rich, particularly mean. To
many a poor officer, and on the pay they receive there are no rich
ones, the tax is prohibitive. It forces them to leave behind
medicines, clothing, photographic supplies, all ammunition, which
means no chance of helping out with duck and pigeon the daily menu
of goat and tinned sausages, and, what is the greatest hardship, all
books. This regulation, which the State permitted to the
concessionaires of the railroad, sends the agents of the State into
the wilderness physically and mentally unequipped, and it is no
wonder the weaker brothers go mad, and act accordingly.
My black boys travelled second-class, which means an open car with
narrow seats very close together and a wooden roof. On these cars
passengers are allowed twenty pounds of luggage and permitted to
collect two hundred and fifty miles of heat and dust. To a black boy
twenty pounds is little enough, for he travels with much more
baggage than an average "blanc." I am not speaking of the Congo boy.
All the possessions the State leaves him he could carry in his
pockets, and he has no pockets. But wherever he goes the Kroo boy,
Mendi boy, or Sierra Leone boy carries all his belongings with him
in a tin trunk painted pink, green, or yellow. He is never separated
from his "box," and the recognized uniform of a Kroo boy at work, is
his breechcloth, and hanging from a ribbon around his knee, the key
to his box. If a boy has no box he generally carries three keys.
In the first-class car were three French officers en route to
Brazzaville, the capital of the French Congo, and a dog, a sad
mongrel, very dirty, very hungry. On each side of the tiny toy car
were six revolving-chairs, so the four men, not to speak of the dog,
quite filled it. And to our own bulk each added hand-bags, cases of
beer, helmets, gun-cases, cameras, water-bottles, and, as the road
does not supply food of any kind, his chop-box. A chop-box is
anything that holds food, and for food of every kind, for the hours
of feeding, and the verb "to feed," on the West Coast, the only
word, the "lazy" word, is "chop."
The absent-minded young missionary, with Fanny jammed between his
ankles, and looking out miserably upon the world, and two other
young missionaries, travelled second-class.
They were even more crowded together than were we, but not so much
with luggage as with humanity. But as a protest against the high
charges of the railroad the missionaries always travel in the open
car. These three young men were for the first time out of England,
and in any fashion were glad to start on their long journey up the
Congo to Bolobo. To them whatever happened was a joke. It was a joke
even when the colored "wife" of one of the French officers used the
broad shoulders of one of them as a pillow and slept sweetly. She
was a large, good-natured, good-looking mulatto, and at the frequent
stations the French officer ran back to her with "white man's chop,"
a tin of sausages, a pineapple, a bottle of beer. She drank the
beer from the bottle, and with religious tolerance offered it to the
Baptists. They assured her without the least regret that they were
teetotalers. To the other blacks in the open car the sight of a
white man waiting on one of their own people was a thrilling
spectacle. They regarded the woman who could command such services
with respect. It would be interesting to know what they thought of
the white man. At each station the open car disgorged its occupants
to fill with water the beer bottle each carried, and to buy from the
natives kwango, the black man's bread, a flaky, sticky flour that
tastes like boiled chestnuts; and pineapples at a franc for ten. And
such pineapples! Not hard and rubber-like, as we know them at home,
but delicious, juicy, melting in the mouth like hothouse grapes,
and, also, after each mouthful, making a complete bath necessary.
One of the French officers had a lump of ice which he broke into
pieces and divided with the others. They saluted magnificently many
times, and as each drowned the morsel in his tin cup of beer, one of
them cried with perfect simplicity: "C'est Paris!" This reminded me
that the ship's steward had placed much ice in my chop basket, and I
carried some of it to another car in which were five of the White
Sisters. For nineteen days I had been with them on the steamer, but
they had spoken to no one, and I was doubtful how they would accept
my offering. But the Mother Superior gave permission, and they took
the ice through the car window, their white hoods bristling with the
excitement of the adventure. They were on their way to a post still
two months' journey up the river, nearly to Lake Tanganyika, and for
three years or, possibly, until they died, that was the last ice
they would see.
At Bongolo station the division superintendent came in the car and
everybody offered him refreshment, and in return he told us, in the
hope of interesting us, of a washout, and then casually mentioned
that an hour before an elephant had blocked the track. It seemed so
much too good to be true that I may have expressed some doubt, for
he said: "Why, of course and certainly. Already this morning one was
at Sariski Station and another at Sipeto." And instead of looking
out of the window I had been reading an American magazine, filched
from the smoking-room, which was one year old!
At Thysville the railroad may have opened a hotel, but when I was
there to hunt for a night's shelter it turned you out bag and
baggage. The French officers decided to risk a Portuguese trading
store known as the "Ideal Hotel," and the missionaries very kindly
gave me the freedom of their Rest House. It is kept open for
those of the Mission who pass between the Upper and Lower Congo.
At the station the young missionaries were met by two older
missionaries--Mr. Weekes, who furnished the "Commission of Enquiry"
with much evidence, which they would not, or were not allowed to,
print, and Mr. Jennings. With them were twenty "boys" from the
Mission and, with each of them carrying a piece of our baggage on
his head, we climbed the hill, and I was given a clean, comfortable,
completely appointed bedroom. Our combined chop we turned over to a
black brother. He is the custodian of the Rest House and an
excellent cook. While he was preparing it my boys spread out my
folding rubber tub. Had I closed the door I should have smothered,
so, in the presence of twenty interested black Baptists, I took an
embarrassing but one of the most necessary baths I can remember.
There still was a piece of the ice remaining, and as the interest in
the bathtub had begun to drag I handed it to one of my audience. He
yelled as though I had thrust into his hand a drop of vitriol, and,
leaping in the air, threw the ice on the floor and dared any one to
touch it. From the "personal" boys who had travelled to Matadi the
Mission boys had heard of ice. But none had ever seen it. They
approached it as we would a rattlesnake. Each touched it and then
sprang away. Finally one, his eyes starting from his head,
cautiously stroked the inoffensive brick and then licked his
fingers. The effect was instantaneous. He assured the others it was
"good chop," and each of them sat hunched about it on his heels,
stroking it, and licking his fingers, and then with delighted
thrills rubbing them over his naked body. The little block of ice
that at Liverpool was only a "quart of water" had assumed the value
of a diamond.
Dinner was enlivened by an incident. Mr. Weekes, with orders simply
to "fry these," had given to the assistant of the cook two tins of
sausages. The small _chef_ presented them to us in the pan in which
he had cooked them, but he had obeyed instructions to the letter and
had fried the tins unopened.
After dinner we sat until late, while the older men told the young
missionaries of atrocities of which, in the twenty years and within
the last three years, they had been witnesses. Already in Mr.
Morel's books I had read their testimony, but hearing from the men
themselves the tales of outrage and cruelty gave them a fresh and
more intimate value, and sent me to bed hot and sick with
indignation. But, nevertheless, the night I slept at Thysville was
the only cool one I knew in the Congo. It was as cool as is a night
in autumn at home. Thysville, between the Upper and the Lower Congo,
with its fresh mountain air, is an obvious site for a hospital for
the servants of the State. To the Congo it should be what Simla is
to the sick men of India; but the State is not running hospitals. It
is in the rubber business.
All steamers for the Upper Congo and her great tributaries, whether
they belong to the State or the Missions, start from Leopoldville.
There they fit out for voyages, some of which last three and four
months. So it is a place of importance, but, like Boma, it looks as
though the people who yesterday built it meant to-morrow to move
out. The river-front is one long dump-heap. It is a grave-yard for
rusty boilers, deck-plates, chains, fire-bars. The interior of the
principal storehouse for ships' supplies, directly in front of the
office of the captain of the port, looks like a junk-shop for old
iron and newspapers. I should have enjoyed taking the captain of the
port by the neck and showing him the water-front and marine shops at
Calabar; the wharfs and quays of stone, the open places spread with
gravel, the whitewashed cement gutters, the spare parts of
machinery, greased and labeled in their proper shelves, even the
condemned scrap-iron in orderly piles; the whole yard as trim as a
battleship.
On the river-front at Leopoldville a grossly fat man, collarless,
coatless, purple-faced, perspiring, was rushing up and down. He was
the captain of the port. Black women had assembled to greet
returning black soldiers, and the captain was calling upon the black
sentries to drive them away. The sentries, yelling, fell upon the
women with their six-foot staves and beat them over the head and
bare shoulders, and as they fled, screaming, the captain of the port
danced in the sun shaking his fists after them and raging violently.
Next morning I was told he had tried to calm his nerves with
absinthe, which is not particularly good for nerves, and was
exceedingly unwell. I was sorry for him. The picture of discipline
afforded by the glazed-eyed official, reeling and cursing in the
open street, had been illuminating.
Although at Leopoldville the State has failed to build wharfs, the
esthetic features of the town have not been neglected, and there is
a pretty plaza called Stanley Park. In the centre of this plaza is a
pillar with, at its base, a bust of Leopold, and on the top of the
pillar a plaster-of-Paris lady, nude, and, not unlike the
Bacchante of MacMonnies. Not so much from the likeness as from
history, I deduced that the lady must be Cléo de Mérode. But whether
the monument is erected to her or to Leopold, or to both of them, I
do not know.
[Illustration: The Monument in Stanley Park, Erected, not to
Stanley, but to Leopold.]
I left Leopoldville in the _Deliverance_. Some of the State boats
that make the long trip to Stanleyville are very large ships. They
have plenty of deck room and many cabins. With their flat, raft-like
hull, their paddle-wheel astern, and the covered sun deck, they
resemble gigantic house-boats. Of one of these boats the
_Deliverance_ was only one-third the size, but I took passage on her
because she would give me a chance to see not only something of the
Congo, but also one of its great tributaries, the less travelled
Kasai. The _Deliverance_ was about sixty-five feet over all and drew
three feet of water. She was built like a mud-scow, with a deck of
iron plates. Amidships, on this deck, was a tiny cabin with berths
for two passengers and standing room for one. The furnaces and
boiler were forward, banked by piles of wood. All the river boats
burn only wood. Her engines were in the stern. These engines and the
driving-rod to the paddle-wheel were uncovered. This gives the
_Deliverance_ the look of a large automobile without a tonneau. You
were constantly wondering what had gone wrong with the carbureter,
and if it rained what would happen to her engines. Supported on iron
posts was an upper deck, on which, forward, stood the captain's box
of a cabin and directly in front of it the steering-wheel. The
telegraph, which signalled to the openwork engine below, and a
dining table as small as a chess-board, completely filled the
"bridge." When we sat at table the captain's boy could only just
squeeze himself between us and the rail. It was like dining in a
private box. And certainly no theatre ever offered such scenery, nor
did any menagerie ever present so many strange animals.
We were four white men: Captain Jensen, his engineer, and the other
passenger, Captain Anfossi, a young Italian. Before he reached his
post he had to travel one month on the _Deliverance_ and for another
month walk through the jungle. He was the most cheerful and amusing
companion, and had he been returning after three years of exile to
his home he could not have been more brimful of spirits. Captain
Jensen was a Dane (almost every river captain is a Swede or a Dane)
and talked a little English, a little French, and a little Bangala.
The mechanician was a Finn and talked the native Bangala, and
Anfossi spoke French. After chop, when we were all assembled on the
upper deck, there would be the most extraordinary talks in four
languages, or we would appoint one man to act as a clearing-house,
and he would translate for the others.
On the lower deck we carried twenty "wood boys," whose duty was to
cut wood for the furnace, and about thirty black passengers. They
were chiefly soldiers, who had finished their period of service for
the State, with their wives and children. They were crowded on the
top of the hatches into a space fifteen by fifteen feet between our
cabin door and the furnace. Around the combings of the hatches, and
where the scuppers would have been had the _Deliverance_ had
scuppers, the river raced over the deck to a depth of four or five
inches. When the passengers wanted to wash their few clothes or
themselves they carried on their ablutions and laundry work where
they happened to be sitting. But for Anfossi and myself to go from
our cabin to the iron ladder of the bridge it was necessary to wade
both in the water and to make stepping stones of the passengers. I
do not mean that we merely stepped over an occasional arm or leg. I
mean we walked on them. You have seen a football player, in a hurry
to make a touchdown, hurdle without prejudice both friends and foes.
Our progress was like this. But by practice we became so expert that
without even awakening them we could spring lightly from the plump
stomach of a black baby to its mother's shoulder, from there leap to
the father's ribs, and rebound upon the rungs of the ladder.
[Illustration: The _Deliverance_.]
The river marched to the sea at the rate of four to five miles an
hour. The _Deliverance_ could make about nine knots an hour, so we
travelled at the average rate of five miles; but for the greater
part of each day we were tied to a bank while the boys went ashore
and cut enough wood to carry us farther. And we never travelled at
night. Owing to the changing currents, before the sun set we ran
into shore and made fast to a tree. I explained how in America the
river boats used search-lights, and was told that on one boat the
State had experimented with a searchlight, but that particular
searchlight having got out of order the idea of night travelling was
condemned.
Ours was a most lazy progress, but one with the most beautiful
surroundings and filled with entertainment. From our private box we
looked out upon the most wonderful of panoramas. Sometimes we were
closely hemmed in by mountains of light-green grass, except where,
in the hollows, streams tumbled in tiny waterfalls between gigantic
trees hung with strange flowering vines and orchids. Or we would
push into great lakes of swirling brown water, dotted with flat
islands overgrown with reed grass higher than the head of a man.
Again the water turned blue and the trees on the banks grew into
forests with the look of cultivated, well-cared-for parks, but with
no sign of man, not even a mud hut or a canoe; only the strangest of
birds and the great river beasts. Sometimes the sky was overcast and
gray, the warm rain shut us in like a fog, and the clouds hid the
peaks of the hills, or there would come a swift black tornado and
the rain beat into our private box, and each would sit crouched in
his rain coat, while the engineer smothered his driving-rods in palm
oil, and the great drops drummed down upon the awning and drowned
the fire in our pipes. After these storms, as though it were being
pushed up from below, the river seemed to rise in the centre, to
become convex. By some optical illusion, it seemed to fall away on
either hand to the depth of three or four feet.