extreme annoyance and of some slight alarm, as though he were
muttering: "This is no place for _me_," and, without more ado, he
began to roll toward the river. Without killing some one, I could
not again use the rifle. The boys were close upon him, prying him
back with the gangplank, beating him with sticks of firewood, trying
to rope him with the steel hawser. On the bridge Captain Jensen and
Anfossi were giving orders in Danish and Italian, and on the bank I
swore in American. Everybody shoved and pushed and beat at the great
bulk, and the great bulk rolled steadily on. We might as well have
tried to budge the Fifth Avenue Hotel. He reached the bank, he
crushed it beneath him, and, like a suspension bridge, splashed into
the water. Even then, we who watched him thought he would stick fast
between the boat and the bank, that the hawser would hold him. But
he sank like a submarine, and we stood gaping at the muddy water and
saw him no more. When I recovered from my first rage I was glad he
was still alive to float in the sun and puff and blow and open his
great jaws in a luxurious yawn. I could imagine his joining his
friends after his meeting with us, and remarking in reference to our
bullets: "I find the mosquitoes are quite bad this morning."
With this chapter is published the photograph Anfossi took, from the
deck of the steamer, of our hippo--the hippo that was too stupid to
know when he was dead. It is not a good photograph, but of our hippo
it is all we have to show. I am still undecided whether to hang it
in the hall or the dining-room.
[Illustration: The Hippopotamus that Did Not Know He Was Dead.]
The days I spent on my trip up the river were of delightful
sameness, sunshine by day, with the great panorama drifting past,
and quiet nights of moonlight. For diversion, there were many
hippos, crocodiles, and monkeys, and, though we saw only their
tracks and heard them only in the jungle, great elephants. And
innumerable strange birds--egrets, eagles, gray parrots, crimson
cranes, and giant flamingoes--as tall as a man and from tip to tip
measuring eight feet.
Each day the programme was the same. The arrival at the wood post,
where we were given only excuses and no wood, and where once or
twice we unloaded blue cloth and bags of salt, which is the currency
of the Upper Congo, and the halt for hours to cut wood in the
forest.
Once we stopped at a mission and noted the contrast it made with the
bare, unkempt posts of the State. It was the Catholic mission at
Wombali, and it was a beauty spot of flowers, thatched houses,
grass, and vegetables. There was a brickyard, and schools, and
sewing-machines, and the blacks, instead of scowling at us, nodded
and smiled and looked happy and contented. The Father was a great
red-bearded giant, who seemed to have still stored up in him all the
energy of the North. While the steamer was unloaded he raced me
over the vegetable garden and showed me his farm. I had seen other
of the Catholic Missions, and I spoke of how well they looked, of
the signs they gave of hard work, and of consideration for the
blacks.
"I am not of that Order," the Father said gravely. He was speaking
in English, and added, as though he expected some one to resent it:
"We are Jesuits." No one resented it, and he added: "We have our
Order in your country. Do you know Fordham College?"
Did I know it? If you are trying to find our farm, the automobile
book tells you to leave Fordham College on your left after Jerome
Avenue.
"Of course, I know it," I said. "They have one of the best baseball
nines near New York; they play the Giants every spring."
The Reverend Father started.
"They play with Giants!" he gasped.
I did not know how to say "baseball nines" in French, but at least
he was assured that whatever it was, it was one of the best near New
York.
Then Captain Jensen's little black boy ran up to tell me the
steamer was waiting, and began in Bangalese to beg something of the
Father. The priest smiled and left us, returning with a rosary and
crucifix, which the boy hung round his neck, and then knelt, and the
red-bearded Father laid his fingers on the boy's kinky head. He was
a very happy boy over his new possession, and it was much coveted by
all the others. One of the black mammies, to ward off evil from the
little naked baby at her breast, offered an arm's length of blue
cloth for "the White Man's fetish."
[Illustration: The Jesuit Brothers at the Wombali Mission.]
My voyage up the Kasai ended at Dima, the headquarters of the Kasai
Concession. I had been told that at Dima I would find a rubber
plantation, and I had gone there to see it. I found that the
plantation was four days distant, and that the boat for the
plantation did not start for six days. I also had been told by the
English missionaries at Dima, that I would find an American mission.
When I reached Dima I learned that the American mission was at a
station further up the river, which could not be reached sooner than
a month. That is the sort of information upon which in the Congo
one is forced to regulate his movements. As there was at Dima
neither mission nor plantation, and as the only boat that would
leave it in ten days was departing the next morning, I remained
there only one night. It was a place cut out of the jungle, two
hundred yards square, and of all stations I saw in the Congo, the
best managed. It is the repair shop for the steamers belonging to
the Kasai Concession, as well as the headquarters of the company and
the residence of the director, M. Dryepoint. He and Van Damme seemed
to be the most popular officials in the Congo. M. Dryepoint was up
the river, so I did not meet him, but I was most courteously and
hospitably entertained by M. Fumière. He gave me a whole house to
myself, and personally showed me over his small kingdom. All the
houses were of brick, and the paths and roads were covered with
gravel and lined with flowers. Nothing in the Congo is more curious
than this pretty town of suburban villas and orderly machine shops;
with the muddy river for a street and the impenetrable jungle for a
back yard. The home of the director at Dima is the proud boast of
the entire Congo. And all they say of it is true. It did have a
billiard table and ice, and a piano, and M. Fumière invited me to
join his friends at an excellent dinner. In furnishing this
celebrated house, the idea had apparently been to place in it the
things one would least expect to find in the jungle, or, without
wishing to be ungracious, anywhere. So, although there are no women
at Dima, there are great mirrors in brass frames, chandeliers of
glass with festoons and pendants of glass, metal lamps with shades
of every color, painted plaster statuettes and carved silk-covered
chairs. In the red glow of the lamps, surrounded by these Belgian
atrocities, M. Fumière sat down to the pianola. The heat of Africa
filled the room; on one side we could have touched the jungle, on
the other in the river the hippopotamus puffed and snorted. M.
Fumière pulled out the stops, and upon the heat and silence of the
night, floated the "Evening Star," Mascagni's "Intermezzo," and
"Chin-chin Chinaman."
Next morning I left for Leopoldville in a boat much larger than the
_Deliverance_, but with none of her cheer or good-fellowship. This
boat was run by the black wife of the captain. Trailing her velvet
gown, and cleaning her teeth with a stick of wood, she penetrated to
every part of the steamer, making discipline impossible and driving
the crew out of control.
I was glad to escape at Kinchassa to the clean and homelike bungalow
and beautiful gardens of the only Englishman still in the employ of
the State, Mr. Cuthbert Malet, who gave me hospitably of his scanty
store of "Scotch," and, what was even more of a sacrifice, of his
precious handful of eggs. A week later I was again in Boma, waiting
for the _Nigeria_ to take me back to Liverpool.
Before returning to the West Coast and leaving the subject of the
Congo, I wish to testify to what seemed to me the enormously
important work that is being done by the missionaries. I am not
always an admirer of the missionary. Some of those one meets in
China and Japan seem to be taking much more interest in their own
bodies than in the souls of others. But, in the Congo, almost the
only people who are working in behalf of the natives are those
attached to the missions. Because they bear witness against Leopold,
much is said by his hired men and press agents against them. But
they are deserving of great praise. Some of them are narrow and
bigoted, and one could wish they were much more tolerant of their
white brothers in exile, but compared with the good they do, these
faults count for nothing. It is due to them that Europe and the
United States know the truth about the Congo. They were the first to
bear witness, and the hazardous work they still are doing for their
fellow men is honest, practical Christianity.
VI
OLD CALABAR
While I was up the Congo and the Kasai rivers, Mrs. Davis had
remained at Boma, and when I rejoined her, we booked passage home on
the _Nigeria_. We chose the _Nigeria_, which is an Elder-Dempster
freight and passenger steamer, in preference to the fast mail
steamer because of the ports of the West Coast we wished to see as
many as possible. And, on her six weeks' voyage to Liverpool, the
_Nigeria_ promised to spend as much time at anchor as at sea. On the
Coast it is a more serious matter to reserve a cabin than in New
York. You do not stop at an uptown office, and on a diagram of the
ship's insides, as though you were playing roulette, point at a
number. Instead, as you are to occupy your cabin, not for one, but
for six, weeks, you search, as vigilantly as a navy officer looking
for contraband, the ship herself and each cabin.
But going aboard was a simple ceremony. The Hôtel Splendide stands
on the bank of the Congo River. After saying "Good-by" to her
proprietor, I walked to the edge of the water and waved my helmet.
In the Congo, a white man standing in the sun without a hat is a
spectacle sufficiently thrilling to excite the attention of all, and
at once Captain Hughes of the _Nigeria_ sent a cargo boat to the
rescue, and on the shoulders of naked Kroo boys Mrs. Davis and the
maid, and the trunks, spears, tents, bathtubs, carved idols, native
mats, and a live mongoos were dropped into it, and we were paddled
to the gangway.
"If that's all, we might as well get under way," said Captain
Hughes. The anchor chains creaked, from the bank the proprietor of
the Splendide waved his hand, and the long voyage to Liverpool had
begun. It was as casual as halting and starting a cable-car.
According to schedule, after leaving the Congo, we should have gone
south and touched at Loanda. But on this voyage, outward bound, the
_Nigeria_ had carried, to help build the railroad at Lobito Bay, a
deckload of camels. They had proved trying passengers, and instead
of first touching at the Congo, Captain Hughes had continued on
south and put them ashore. So we were robbed of seeing both Loanda
and the camels.
This line, until Calabar is reached, carries but few passengers,
and, except to receive cargo, the ship is not fully in commission.
During this first week she is painted, and holystoned, her carpets
are beaten, her cabins scrubbed and aired, and the passengers mess
with the officers. So, of the ship's life, we acquired an intimate
knowledge, her interests became our own, and the necessity of
feeding her gaping holds with cargo was personal and acute. On a
transatlantic steamer, when once the hatches are down, the captain
need think only of navigation; on these coasters, the hatches never
are down, and the captain, that sort of captain dear to the heart of
the owners, is the man who fills the holds.
A skipper going ashore to drum up trade was a novel spectacle.
Imagine the captain of one of the Atlantic greyhounds prying among
the warehouses on West Street, demanding of the merchants:
"Anything going my way, this trip?" He would scorn to do it. Before
his passengers have passed the custom officers, he is in mufti, and
on his way to his villa on Brooklyn Heights, or to the Lambs Club,
and until the Blue Peter is again at the fore, little he cares for
passengers, mails, or cargo. But the captain of a "coaster" must be
sailor and trader, too. He is expected to navigate a coast, the
latest chart of which is dated somewhere near 1830, and at which the
waves rush in walls of spray, sometimes as high as a three-story
house. He must speak all the known languages of Europe, and all the
unknown tongues of innumerable black brothers. At each port he must
entertain out of his own pocket the agents of all the trading
houses, and, in his head, he must keep the market price, "when laid
down in Liverpool," of mahogany, copra, copal, rubber, palm oil, and
ivory. To see that the agent has not overlooked a few bags of ground
nuts, or a dozen puncheons of oil, he must go on shore and peer into
the compound of each factory, and on board he must keep peace
between the Kroo boys and the black deck passengers, and see that
the white passengers with a temperature of 105, do not drink more
than is good for them. At least, those are a few of the duties the
captains on the ships controlled by Sir Alfred Jones, who is Elder
and Dempster, are expected to perform. No wonder Sir Alfred is
popular.
Our first port of call was Landana, in Portuguese territory, but two
ships of the Woermann Line were there ahead of us and had gobbled up
all the freight. So we could but up anchor and proceed to
Libreville, formerly the capital of the French Congo. At five in the
morning by the light of a ship's lantern, we were paddled ashore to
drum up trade. We found two traders, Ives and Thomas, who had
waiting for the _Nigeria_ at the mouth of the Gabun River six
hundred logs of mahogany, and, in consequence, there was general
rejoicing, and Scotch and "sparklets," and even music from a German
music-box that would burst into song only after it had been fed with
a copper. One of the clerks said that Ives had forgotten how to
extract the coppers and in consequence was using the music-box as a
savings bank.
In the French Congo the natives are permitted to trade; in the
Congo Free State they are not, or, rather, they have nothing with
which to trade, and the contrast between the empty "factories" of
the Congo and those of Libreville, crowded with natives buying and
selling, was remarkable. There also was a conspicuous difference in
the quality and variety of the goods. In Leopold's Congo "trade"
goods is a term of contempt. It describes articles manufactured only
for those who have no choice and must accept whatever is offered.
When your customers must take what you please to give them the
quality of your goods is likely to deteriorate. Salt of the poorest
grade, gaudy fabrics that neither "wear" nor "wash," bars of coarse
soap (the native is continually washing his single strip of cloth),
and axe-heads made of iron, are what Leopold thinks are a fair
exchange for the forced labor of the black.
But the articles I found in the factories in Libreville were what,
in the Congo, are called "white man's goods" and were of excellent
quality and in great variety. There were even French novels and
cigars. Some of the latter, called the Young American on account of
the name and the flag on the lid, tempted me, until I saw they were
manufactured by Dusseldorffer and Vanderswassen, and one suspected
Rotterdam.
In Ives's factory I saw for the first time a "trade" rifle, or Tower
musket. In the vernacular of the Coast, they are "gas-pipe" guns.
They are put together in England, and to a white man are a most
terrifying weapon. The original Tower muskets, such as, in the days
of '76, were hung over the fireplace of the forefathers of the Sons
of the Revolution, were manufactured in England, and stamped with
the word "Tower," and for the reigning king G.R. I suppose at that
date at the Tower of London there was an arsenal; but I am ready to
be corrected. To-day the guns are manufactured at Birmingham, but
they still have the flint lock, and still are stamped with the word
"Tower" and the royal crown over the letters G.R., and with the
arrow which is supposed to mark the property of the government. The
barrel is three feet four inches long, and the bore is that of an
artesian well. The native fills four inches of this cavity with
powder and the remaining three feet with rusty nails, barbed wire,
leaden slugs, and the legs and broken parts of iron pots. An officer
of the W.A.F.F.'s, in a fight in the bush in South Nigeria, had one
of these things fired at him from a distance of fifteen feet. He
told me all that saved him was that when the native pulled the
trigger the recoil of the gun "kicked" the muzzle two feet in the
air and the native ten feet into the bush. I bought a Tower rifle at
the trade price, a pound, and brought it home. But although my
friends have offered to back either end of the gun as being the more
destructive, we have found no one with a sufficient sporting spirit
to determine the point.
Libreville is a very pretty town, but when it was laid out the
surveyors just missed placing the Equator in its main street. It is
easy to understand why with such a live wire in the vicinity
Libreville is warm. From the same cause it also is rich in flowers,
vines, and trees growing in generous, undisciplined abundance,
making of Libreville one vast botanical garden, and burying the town
and its bungalows under screens of green and branches of scarlet
and purple flowers. Close to the surf runs an avenue bordered by
giant cocoanut palms and, after the sun is down, this is the
fashionable promenade. Here every evening may be seen in their
freshest linen the six married white men of Libreville, and, in the
latest Paris frocks, the six married ladies, while from the verandas
of the factories that line the sea front and from under the paper
lanterns of the Café Guion the clerks and traders sip their absinthe
and play dominoes, and cast envious glances at the six fortunate
fellow exiles.
For several days we lay a few miles south of Libreville, off the
mouth of the Gabun River, taking in the logs of mahogany. It was a
continuous performance of the greatest interest. I still do not
understand why all those engaged in it were not drowned, or pounded
to a pulp. Just before we touched at the Gabun River, two tramp
steamers, chartered by Americans, carried off a full cargo of this
mahogany to the States. It was an experiment the result of which the
traders of Libreville are awaiting with interest. The mahogany that
the reader sees in America probably comes from Hayti, Cuba, or
Belize, and is of much finer quality than that of the Gabun River,
which latter is used for making what the trade calls "fancy"
cigar-boxes and cheap furniture. But before it becomes a cigar-box
it passes through many adventures. Weeks before the steamer arrives
the trader, followed by his black boys, explores the jungle and
blazes the trees. Then the boys cut trails through the forest, and,
using logs for rollers, drag and push the tree trunks to the bank of
the river. There the tree is cut into huge cubes, weighing about a
ton, and measuring twelve to fifteen feet in length and three feet
across each face. A boy can "shape" one of these logs in a day.
Although his pay varies according to whether the tributaries of the
river are full or low, so making the moving of the logs easy or
difficult, he can earn about three pounds ten shillings a month,
paid in cash. Compared with the eighty cents a month paid only a few
miles away in the Congo Free State, and in "trade" goods, these are
good wages. When the log is shaped the mark of the trader is branded
on it with an iron, just as we brand cattle, and it is turned loose
on the river. At the mouth of the river there is little danger of
the log escaping, for the waves are stronger than the tide, and
drive the logs upon the shore. There, in the surf, we found these
tons of mahogany pounding against each other. In the ship's
steam-launch were iron chains, a hundred yards long, to which, at
intervals, were fastened "dogs," or spikes. These spikes were driven
into the end of a log, the brand upon the log was noted by the
captain and trader, and the logs, chained together like the vertebræ
of a great sea serpent, were towed to the ship's side. There they
were made fast, and three Kroo boys knocked the spike out of each
log, warped a chain around it, and made fast that chain to the steel
hawser of the winch. As it was drawn to the deck a Senegalese
soldier, acting for the Customs, gave it a second blow with a
branding hammer, and, thundering and smashing, it swung into the
hold.
[Illustration: There, in the Surf, We Found These Tons of Mahogany,
Pounding Against Each Other.]
In the "round up" of the logs the star performers were the three
Kroo boys at the ship's side. For days, in fascinated horror, the
six passengers watched them, prayed for them, and made bets as to
which would be the first to die. One understands that a Kroo boy is
as much at home in the sea as on shore, but these boys were neither
in the sea nor on shore. They were balancing themselves on blocks of
slippery wood that weighed a ton, but which were hurled about by the
great waves as though they were life-belts. All night the hammering
of the logs made the ship echo like a monster drum, and all day
without an instant's pause each log reared and pitched, spun like a
barrel, dived like a porpoise, or, broadside, battered itself
against the iron plates. But, no matter what tricks it played, a
Kroo boy rode it as easily as though it were a horse in a
merry-go-round.
It was a wonderful exhibition. It furnished all the thrills that one
gets when watching a cowboy on a bucking bronco, or a trained seal.
Again and again a log, in wicked conspiracy with another log, would
plan to entice a Kroo boy between them, and smash him. At the sight
the passengers would shriek a warning, the boy would dive between
the logs, and a mass of twelve hundred pounds of mahogany would
crash against a mass weighing fifteen hundred with a report like
colliding freight cars.
And then, as, breathless, we waited to see what once was a Kroo boy
float to the surface, he would appear sputtering and grinning, and
saying to us as clearly as a Kroo smile can say it: "He never
touched me!"
[Illustration: A Log of Mahogany Jammed in the Anchor Chains.]
Two days after we had stored away the mahogany we anchored off
Duala, the capital of the German Cameroons. Duala is built upon a
high cliff, and from the water the white and yellow buildings with
many pillars gave it the appearance of a city. Instead, it is a
clean, pretty town. With the German habit of order, it has been laid
out like barracks, but with many gardens, well-kept, shaded streets,
and high, cool houses, scientifically planned to meet the
necessities of the tropics. At Duala the white traders and officials
were plump and cheerful looking, and in the air there was more of
prosperity than fever. The black and white sentry boxes and the
native soldiers practising the stork march of the Kaiser's army were
signs of a rigid military rule, but the signs of Germany's efforts
in trade were more conspicuous. Nowhere on the coast did we see as
at Duala such gorgeous offices as those of the great trading house
of Woermann, the hated rivals of "Sir Alfred," such carved
furniture, such shining brass railings, and nowhere else did we see
plate-glass windows, in which, with unceasing wonder, the natives
stared at reflections of their own persons. In the river there was a
private dry dock of the Woermanns, and along the wharfs for acres
was lumber for the Woermanns, boxes of trade goods, puncheons and
casks for the Woermanns, private cooper shops and private machine
shops and private banks for the Woermanns. The house flag of the
Woermanns became as significant as that of a reigning sovereign. One
felt inclined to salute it.