I
Go up the Kasai River to Djoko Punda and you believe, despite the
background of tropical vegetation and the ever-present naked savage,
that for the moment you are back in the United States. You see American
jitneys scooting through the jungle; you watch five-ton American
tractors hauling heavy loads along the sandy roads; you hear American
slang and banter on all sides, and if you are lucky enough to be invited
to a meal you get American hot cakes with real American maple syrup. The
air tingles with Yankee energy and vitality.
All this means that you have arrived at the outpost of Little America in
the Belgian Congo--the first actual signboard of the least known and
most picturesque piece of American financial venturing abroad. It has
helped to redeem a vast region from barbarism and opened up an area of
far-reaching economic significance. At Djoko Punda you enter the domain
of the Forminiere, the corporation founded by a monarch and which has a
kingdom for a partner. Woven into its story is the romance of a one-time
barefoot Virginia boy who became the commercial associate of a king.
What is the Forminiere and what does it do? The name is a contraction of
Société Internationale Forestiere & Miniere du Congo. In the Congo,
where companies have long titles, it is the fashion to reduce them to
the dimensions of a cable code-word. Thus the high-sounding Compagnie
Industrielle pour les Transports et Commerce au Stanley Pool is
mercifully shaved to "Citas." This information, let me say, is a
life-saver for the alien with a limited knowledge of French and whose
pronunciation is worse.
Clearly to understand the scope and purpose of the Forminiere you must
know that it is one of the three companies that have helped to shape the
destiny of the Congo. I encountered the first--the Union Miniere--the
moment I entered the Katanga. The second is the Huileries du Congo
Belge, the palm-oil producers whose bailiwick abuts upon the Congo and
Kwilu Rivers. Now we come to the third and the most important agency, so
far as American interest is affected, in the Forminiere, whose empire is
the immense section watered by the Kasai River and which extends across
the border into Angola. In the Union Miniere you got the initial hint of
America's part in the development of the Congo. That part, however, was
entirely technical. With the Forminiere you have the combination of
American capital and American engineering in an achievement that is, to
say the least, unusual.
The moment I dipped into Congo business history I touched the Forminiere
for the reason that it was the pet project of King Leopold, and the last
and favorite corporate child of his economic statesmanship. Moreover,
among the leading Belgian capitalists interested were men who had been
Stanley's comrades and who had helped to blaze the path of civilization
through the wilds. King Albert spoke of it to me in terms of
appreciation and more especially of the American end. I felt a sense of
pride in the financial courage and physical hardihood of my countrymen
who had gone so far afield. I determined to see the undertaking at
first hand.
My experience with it proved to be the most exciting of my whole African
adventure. All that I had hitherto undergone was like a springtime
frolic compared to the journey up the Kasai and through the jungle that
lurks beyond. I saw the war-like savage on his native heath; I travelled
with my own caravan through the forest primeval; I employed every
conceivable kind of transport from the hammock swung on a pole and
carried on the shoulders of husky natives, to the automobile. The
primitive and modern met at almost every stage of the trip which proved
to be first cousin to a thriller from beginning to end. Heretofore I had
been under the spell of the Congo River. Now I was to catch the magic of
its largest tributary, the Kasai.
Long before the Forminiere broke out its banner, America had been
associated with the Congo. It is not generally known that Henry M.
Stanley, who was born John Rowlands, achieved all the feats which made
him an international figure under the name of his American benefactor
who adopted him in New Orleans after he had run away to sea from a Welsh
workhouse. He was for years to all intents and purposes an American, and
carried the American flag on two of his famous expeditions.
President Cleveland was the first chief dignitary of a nation to
recognize the Congo Free State in the eighties, and his name is
perpetuated in Mount Cleveland, near the headwaters of the Congo River.
An American Minister to Belgium, General H. S. Sanford, had a
conspicuous part in all the first International African Associations
formed by King Leopold to study the Congo situation. This contact,
however, save Stanley's share, was diplomatic and a passing phase. It
was the prelude to the constructive and permanent part played by the
American capitalists in the Forminiere, chief of whom is Thomas F. Ryan.
The reading world associates Ryan with the whirlpool of Big Finance. He
ruled New York traction and he recast the tobacco world. Yet nothing
appealed to his imagination and enthusiasm like the Congo. He saw it in
very much the same way that Rhodes viewed Rhodesia. Every great American
master of capital has had his particular pet. There is always some
darling of the financial gods. The late J. P. Morgan, for example,
regarded the United States Steel Corporation as his prize performance
and talked about it just like a doting father speaks of a successful
son. The Union Pacific System was the apple of E. H. Harriman's eye, and
the New York Central was a Vanderbilt fetish for decades. So with Ryan
and the Congo. Other powerful Americans have become associated with him,
as you will see later on, but it was the tall, alert, clear-eyed
Virginian, who rose from penniless clerk to be a Wall Street king, who
first had the vision on this side of the Atlantic, and backed it with
his millions. I am certain that if Ryan had gone into the Congo earlier
and had not been engrossed in his American interests, he would probably
have done for the whole of Central Africa what Rhodes did for South
Africa.
We can now get at the beginnings of the Forminiere. Most large
corporations radiate from a lawyer's office. With the Forminiere it was
otherwise. The center of inspiration was the stone palace at Brussels
where King Leopold II, King of the Belgians, held forth. The year 1906
was not a particularly happy one for him. The atrocity campaign was at
its height abroad and the Socialists were pounding him at home.
Despite the storm of controversy that raged about him one clear idea
shone amid the encircling gloom. That idea was to bulwark the Congo Free
State, of which he was also sovereign, before it was ceded to Belgium.
[Illustration: THOMAS F. RYAN]
Between 1879 and 1890 Leopold personally supported the cost of creating
and maintaining the Free State. It represented an outlay of more than
$2,500,000. Afterwards he had adequate return in the revenues from
rubber and ivory. But Leopold was a royal spender in the fullest sense.
He had a variety of fads that ranged from youthful and beguiling
femininity to the building of palaces and the beautifying of his own
country. He lavished millions on making Brussels a sumptuous capital and
Ostend an elaborate seaside resort. With his private life we are not
concerned. Leopold the pleasure-seeker was one person; Leopold the
business man was another, and as such he was unique among the rulers of
Europe.
Leopold contradicted every known tradition of royalty. The king business
is usually the business of spending unearned money. Your royal
spendthrift is a much more familiar figure than the royal miser.
Moreover, nobody ever associates productive power with a king save in
the big family line. His task is inherited and with it a bank account
sufficient to meet all needs. This immunity from economic necessity is a
large price to pay for lack of liberty in speech and action. The
principal job of most kings, as we all know, is to be a noble and
acquiescent figure-head, to pin decorations on worthy persons, and to
open public exhibitions.
Leopold did all of these things but they were incidental to his larger
task. He was an insurgent from childhood. He violated all the rules of
the royal game not only by having a vision and a mind all his own but
in possessing a keen commercial instinct. Geography was his hobby at
school. Like Rhodes, he was forever looking at maps. When he became king
he saw that the hope of Belgium economically lay in colonization. In
1860 he made a journey to the Far East, whence he returned deeply
impressed with trade opportunities in China. Afterwards he was the prime
mover in the construction of the Pekin-Hankow Railway. I do not think
most persons know that Leopold at one time tried to establish a Belgian
colony in Ethiopia. Another act in his life that has escaped the casual
biographer was his effort to purchase the Philippines from Spain. Now
you can see why he seized upon the Congo as a colonizing possibility the
moment he read Henry M. Stanley's first article about it in the London
Telegraph.
There was a vital reason why Belgium should have a big and prosperous
colony. Her extraordinary internal development demanded an outlet
abroad. The doughty little country so aptly called "The Cockpit of
Europe," and which bore the brunt of the first German advance in the
Great War, is the most densely populated in the world. It has two
hundred and forty-seven inhabitants for each square kilometer. England
only counts one hundred and forty-six, Germany one hundred and
twenty-five, France seventy-two, and the United States thirteen. The
Belgians had to have economic elbow room and Leopold was determined that
they should have it.
His creation of the Congo Free State was just one evidence of his
shrewdness and diplomacy. Half a dozen of the great powers had their eye
on this untouched garden spot in Central Africa and would have risked
millions of dollars and thousands of men to grab it. Leopold, through a
series of International Associations, engineered the famous Berlin
Congress of 1884 and with Bismarck's help put the Free State on the map,
with himself as steward. It was only a year ago in Germany that a former
high-placed German statesman admitted to me that one of the few
fundamental mistakes that the Iron Chancellor ever made was to permit
Leopold to snatch the Congo from under the very eyes and hands of
Germany. I quote this episode to show that when it came to business
Leopold made every king in Europe look like an office boy. Even so
masterful a manipulator of men as Cecil Rhodes failed with him. Rhodes
sought his aid in his trans-African telegraph scheme but Leopold was too
shrewd for him. After his first audience with the Belgian king Rhodes
said to Robert Williams, "I thought I was clever but I was no match for
him."
The only other modern king interested in business was the former Kaiser,
Mr. Wilhelm Hohenzollern. Although he has no business sense in the way
that Leopold had it, he always had a keen appreciation of big business
as an imperial prop. Like Leopold, he had a congested country and
realized that permanent expansion lay in colonization. The commercial
magnates of Germany used him for their own ends but their teamwork
advanced the whole empire. Wilhelm was a silent partner in the potash,
shipping, and electric-machinery trusts. He earned whatever he received
because he was in every sense an exalted press-agent,--a sort of
glorified publicity promoter. His strong point was to go about
proclaiming the merits of German wares and he always made it a point to
scatter samples. On a visit to Italy he left behind a considerable
quantity of soap. There was a great rush to get these royal left-overs.
Two weeks later a small army of German soap salesmen descended upon the
country selling this identical product.
Whatever may be said of Leopold, one thing is certain. He was not small.
Wilhelm used the brains of other men; Leopold employed his own, and
every capitalist who went up against him paid tribute to this asset.
We can now go back to 1906, the year that was to mark the advent of
America into the Congo. Leopold knew that the days of the Congo as a
Free State were numbered. His personally-conducted stewardship of the
Colony was being assailed by the Socialists on one hand and the atrocity
proclaimers on the other. Leopold was undoubtedly sincere in his desire
to economically safeguard the African possession before it passed out of
his control. In any event, during the summer of that year he sent a
message to Ryan asking him to confer with him at Brussels. The summons
came out of a clear sky and at first the American financier paid no
attention to it. He was then on a holiday in Switzerland. When a second
invitation came from the king, he accepted, and in September there began
a series of meetings between the two men which resulted in the
organization of the Forminiere and with it the dawn of a real
international epoch in American enterprise.
In the light of our immense riches the timidity of American capital in
actual constructive enterprise overseas is astonishing. Scrutinize the
world business map and you see how shy it has been. We own rubber
plantations in Sumatra, copper mines in Chile, gold interests in
Ecuador, and have dabbled in Russian and Siberian mining. These
undertakings are slight, however, compared with the scope of the world
field and our own wealth. Mexico, where we have extensive smelting, oil,
rubber, mining and agricultural investments, is so close at hand that it
scarcely seems like a foreign country. Strangely enough our capital
there has suffered more than in any other part of the globe. The
spectacle of American pioneering in the Congo therefore takes on a
peculiar significance.
There are two reasons why our capital has not wandered far afield. One
is that we have a great country with enormous resources and consequently
almost unlimited opportunities for the employment of cash at home. The
other lies in the fact that American capital abroad is not afforded the
same protection granted the money of other countries. Take British
capital. It is probably the most courageous of all. The sun never sets
on it. England is a small country and her money, to spread its wings,
must go elsewhere. Moreover, Britain zealously safeguards her Nationals
and their investments, and we, I regret to say, have not always done
likewise. The moment an Englishman or the English flag is insulted a
warship speeds to the spot and John Bull wants to know the reason why.
Why did Leopold seek American capital and why did he pick out Thomas F.
Ryan? There are several motives and I will deal with them in order. In
the first place American capital is about the only non-political money
in the world. The English pound, for example, always flies the Union
Jack and is a highly sensitive commodity. When England puts money into
an enterprise she immediately makes the Foreign Office an accessory.
German overseas enterprise is even more meddlesome. It has always been
the first aid to poisonous and pernicious penetration. Even French
capital is flavoured with imperialism despite the fact that it is the
product of a democracy. Our dollars are not hitched to the star of
empire. We have no dreams of world conquest. It is the safest
politically to deal with, and Leopold recognized this fact.
In the second place he did not want anything to interfere with his Congo
rubber industry. Now we get to the real reason, perhaps, why he sent for
Ryan. In conjunction with the late Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, Ryan had
developed the rubber industry in Mexico, by extracting rubber from the
guayele shrub which grows wild in the desert. Leopold knew this--he had
a way of finding out about things--and he sought to kill two birds with
one stone. He wanted this Mexican process and at the same time he needed
capital for the Congo. In any event, Ryan went to see him and the
Forminiere was born.
There is no need of rehearsing here the concrete details of this
enterprise. All we want are the essential facts. Leopold realized that
the Forminiere was the last business venture of his life and he
projected it on a truly kingly scale. It was the final chance for huge
grants and the result was that the Forminiere received the mining and
mineral rights to more than 7,000,000 acres, and other concessions for
agriculture aggregating 2,500,000 acres in addition.
The original capital was only 3,000,000 francs but this has been
increased from time to time until it is now more than 10,000,000 francs.
The striking feature of the organization was the provision inserted by
Leopold that made Belgium a partner. One-half of the shares were
assigned to the Crown. The other half was divided into two parts. One of
these parts was subscribed by the King and the Société Generale of
Belgium, and the other was taken in its entirety by Ryan. Subsequently
Ryan took in as associates Daniel Guggenheim, Senator Aldrich, Harry
Payne Whitney and John Hays Hammond. When Leopold died his share went to
his heirs. Upon the death of Aldrich his interest was acquired by Ryan,
who is the principal American owner. No shares have ever been sold and
none will be. The original trust certificate issued to Ryan and
Guggenheim remains intact. The company therefore remains a close
corporation in every respect and as such is unique among kindred
enterprises.
II
At this point the question naturally arises--what is the Société
Generale? To ask it in Belgium would be on a par with inquiring the name
of the king. Its bank notes are in circulation everywhere and it is
known to the humblest peasant.
The Société Generale was organized in 1822 and is therefore one of the
oldest, if not the oldest, joint stock bank of the Continent. The
general plan of the famous Deutsche Bank of Berlin, which planted the
German commercial flag everywhere, and which provided a large part of
the bone and sinew of the Teutonic world-wide exploitation campaign, was
based upon it. With finance as with merchandising, the German is a prize
imitator.
The Société Generale, however, is much more than a bank. It is the
dynamo that drives Belgian enterprise throughout the globe. We in
America pride ourselves on the fact that huge combinations of capital
geared up to industry are a specialty entirely our own. We are much
mistaken. Little Belgium has in the Société an agency for development
unique among financial institutions. Its imposing marble palace on the
Rue Royale is the nerve center of a corporate life that has no
geographical lines. With a capital of 62,000,000 francs it has piled up
reserves of more than 400,000,000 francs. In addition to branches called
"filial banks" throughout Belgium, it also controls the powerful "Banque
pour l'Etranger," which is established in London, Paris, New York,
Cairo, and the Far East.
One distinctive feature of the Société Generale is its close alliance
with the Government. It is a sort of semi-official National Treasury and
performs for Belgium many of the functions that the Bank of England
transacts for the United Kingdom. But it has infinitely more vigour and
push than the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street in London. Its leading
officials are required to appear on all imposing public occasions such
as coronations and the opening of Parliament. The Belgian Government
applies to the Société Generale whenever any national financial
enterprise is to be inaugurated and counts upon it to take the initial
steps. Thus it became the backbone of Leopold's ramified projects and it
was natural that he should invoke its assistance in the organization of
the Forminiere.
[Illustration: JEAN JADOT]
Long before the Forminiere came into being, the Société Generale was the
chief financial factor in the Congo. With the exception of the Huileries
du Congo Belge, which is British, it either dominates or has large
holdings in every one of the sixteen major corporations doing business
in the Colony and whose combined total capitalization is more than
200,000,000 francs. This means that it controls railways and river
transport, and the cotton, gold, rubber, ivory and diamond output.
The custodians of this far-flung financial power are the money kings of
Belgium. Chief among them is Jean Jadot, Governor of the Société
Generale--the institution still designates its head by this ancient
title--and President of the Forminiere. In him and his colleagues you
find those elements of self-made success so dear to the heart of the
human interest historian. It would be difficult to find anywhere a more
picturesque group of men than those who, through their association with
King Leopold and the Société, have developed the Congo and so many other
enterprises.
Jadot occupies today the same position in Belgium that the late J. P.
Morgan held in his prime in America. He is the foremost capitalist.
Across the broad, flat-topped desk of his office in that marble palace
in the Rue Royale the tides of Belgian finance ebb and flow. Just as
Morgan's name made an underwriting in New York so does Jadot's put the
stamp of authority on it in Brussels. Morgan inherited a great name and
a fortune. Jadot made his name and his millions.
When you analyze the lives of American multi-millionaires you find a
curious repetition of history. Men like John D. Rockefeller, Henry H.
Rogers, Thomas F. Ryan, and Russell Sage began as grocery clerks in
small towns. Something in the atmosphere created by spice and sugar must
have developed the money-making germ. With the plutocrats of Belgium it
was different. Practically all of them, and especially those who ruled
the financial institutions, began as explorers or engineers. This shows
the intimate connection that exists between Belgium and her overseas
interests.
Jadot is a good illustration. At twenty he graduated as engineer from
Louvain University. At thirty-five he had directed the construction of
the tramways of Cairo and of the Lower Egyptian Railways. He was now
caught up in Leopold's great dream of Belgian expansion. The moment that
the king obtained the concession for constructing the 1,200 mile railway
from Pekin to Hankow he sent Jadot to China to take charge. Within eight
years he completed this task in the face of almost insuperable
difficulties, including a Boxer uprising, which cost the lives of some
of his colleagues and tested his every resource.
In 1905 he entered the Société Generale. At once he became fired with
Leopold's enthusiasm for the Congo and the necessity for making it an
outlet for Belgium. Jadot was instrumental in organizing the Union
Miniere and was also the compelling force behind the building of the
Katanga Railway. In 1912 he became Vice Governor of the Société and the
following year assumed the Governorship. In addition to being President
of the Forminiere he is also head of the Union Miniere and of the new
railroad which is to connect the Katanga with the Lower Congo.
When you meet Jadot you are face to face with a human organization
tingling with nervous vitality. He reminds me more of E. H. Harriman
than of any other American empire builder that I have met, and like
Harriman he seems to be incessantly bound up to the telephone. He is
keen, quick, and forceful and talks as rapidly as he thinks. Almost
slight of body, he at first gives the impression of being a student for
his eyes are deep and thoughtful. There is nothing meditative in his
manner, however, for he is a live wire in the fullest American sense.
Every time I talked with him I went away with a new wonder at his stock
of world information. Men of the Jadot type never climb to the heights
they attain without a reason. In his case it is first and foremost an
accurate knowledge of every undertaking. He never goes into a project
without first knowing all about it--a helpful rule, by the way, that the
average person may well observe in the employment of his money.
If Jadot is a live wire, then his confrere, Emile Francqui, is a whole
battery. Here you touch the most romantic and many-sided career in all
Belgian financial history. It reads like a melodrama and is packed with
action and adventure. I could almost write a book about any one of its
many stirring phases.
At fourteen Francqui was a penniless orphan. He worked his way through a
regimental school and at twenty was commissioned a sub-lieutenant. It
was 1885 and the Congo Free State had just been launched. Having studied
engineering he was sent out at once to Boma to join the Topographic
Brigade. During this first stay in the Congo he was in charge of a
boat-load of workmen engaged in wharf construction. The captain of a
British gunboat hailed him and demanded that he stop. Francqui replied,
"If you try to stop me I will lash my boat to yours and destroy it with
dynamite." He had no further trouble.
After three years service in the Congo he returned to Brussels and
became the military instructor of Prince Albert, now King of the
Belgians. The African fever was in his veins. He heard that a mission
was about to depart for Zanzibar and East Africa. A knowledge of English
was a necessary part of the equipment of the chief officer. Francqui
wanted this job but he did not know a syllable of English. He went to a
friend and confided his ambition.
"Are you willing to take a chance with one word?" asked his colleague.
"I am," answered the young officer.
He thereupon acquired the word "yes," his friend's injunction being, "If
you say 'yes' to every question you can probably carry it off."
Francqui thereupon went to the Foreign Office and was immediately asked
in English:
"Can you speak English?"
"Yes," was his immediate retort.
"Are you willing to undertake the hazards of this journey to Zanzibar?"
queried the interrogator.
"Yes," came the reply.
Luck was with Francqui for, as his good angel had prophesied, his one
word of English met every requirement and he got the assignment. Since
that time, I might add, he has acquired a fluent command of the English
language. Francqui has always been willing to take a chance and lead a
forlorn hope.
It was in the early nineties that his exploits made his name one of the
greatest in African conquest and exploration. He went out to the Congo
as second in command of what was known as the Bia Expedition, sent to
explore the Katanga and adjacent territory. After two hard years of
incessant campaigning the expedition fell into hard lines. Captain Bia
succumbed to smallpox and the column encountered every conceivable
hardship. Men died by the score and there was no food. Francqui took
charge, and by his indomitable will held the force together, starving
and suffering with his men. During this experience he travelled more
than 5,000 miles on foot and through a region where no other white man
had ever gone before. He explored the Luapula, the headwaters of the
Congo, and opened up a new world to civilization. No other single Congo
expedition save that of Stanley made such an important contribution to
the history of the Colony.
Most men would have been satisfied to rest with this achievement. With
Francqui it simply marked a milepost in his life. In 1896, when he
resigned from the army, Leopold had fixed his eyes on China as a scene
of operations, and he sent Francqui there to clinch the Pekin-Hankow
concession, which he did. In the course of these negotiations he met
Jadot, who was later to become his associate both in the Société
Generale and in the Forminiere.
In 1901 Francqui again went to China, this time as agent of the
Compagnie d'Orient, which coveted the coal mines of Kaiping that were
supposed to be among the richest in the world. The British and Germans
also desired this valuable property which had been operated for some
years by a Chinese company. As usual, Francqui got what he went after
and took possession of the property. The crude Chinese method of mining
had greatly impaired the workings and they had to be entirely
reconstructed. Among the engineers employed was an alert, smooth-faced,
keen-minded young American named Herbert Hoover.
Upon his return to Brussels Francqui allied himself with Colonel Thys,
who was head of the Banque d'Outremer, the rival of the Société
Generale. After he had mastered the intricacies of banking he became a
director of the Société and with Jadot forged to the front in finance.
If Jadot stood as the Morgan, then Francqui became the Stillman of the
Belgian money world.
Then came the Great War and the German avalanche which overwhelmed
Belgium. Her banks were converted into hospitals; her industry lay
prostrate; her people faced starvation. Some vital agency was necessary
to centralize relief at home in the same way that the Commission for
Relief in Belgium,--the famous "C. R. B."--crystallized it abroad.
The Comite Rationale was formed by Belgians to feed and clothe the
native population and it became the disbursing agent for the "C. R. B."
Francqui was chosen head of this body and directed it until the
armistice. It took toll of all his energy, diplomacy and instinct for
organization. Needless to say it was one of the most difficult of all
relief missions in the war. Francqui was a loyal Belgian and he was
surrounded by the suspicious and domineering German conquerors. Yet
they trusted him, and his word in Belgium for more than four years was
absolute law. He was, in truth, a benevolent dictator.
[Illustration: EMILE FRANCQUI]
His war life illustrates one of the quaint pranks that fate often plays.
As soon as the "C. R. B." was organized in London Francqui hastened over
to England to confer with the American organizers. To his surprise and
delight he encountered in its master spirit and chairman, the
smooth-faced young engineer whom he had met out in the Kaiping coal
mines before. It was the first time that he and Hoover had seen each
other since their encounter in China. They now worked shoulder to
shoulder in the monster mercy of all history.
Francqui is blunt, silent, aggressive. When Belgium wants something done
she instinctively turns to him. In 1920, after the delay in fixing the
German reparation embarrassed the country, and liquid cash was
imperative, he left Brussels on three days' notice and within a
fortnight from the time he reached New York had negotiated a
fifty-million-dollar loan. He is as potent in official life as in
finance for as Special Minister of State without portfolio he is a real
power behind a real throne.
Although Francqui is a director in the Société Generale, he is also what
we would call Chairman of the Board of Banque d'Outremer. This shows
that the well-known institution of "community of interests" is not
confined to the United States. With Jadot he represents the Société in
the Forminiere Board. I have used these two men to illustrate the type
represented by the Belgian financial kings. I could mention various
others. They include Alexander Delcommune, famous as Congo fighter and
explorer, who is one of the leading figures of the Banque d'Outremer;
Edmond Solvay, the industrial magnate, and Edward Bunge, the Antwerp
merchant prince. Almost without exception they and their colleagues have
either lived in the Congo, or have been guided in their fortunes by it.
You have now had the historical approach with all personal side-lights
to the hour when America actually invaded the Congo. As soon as Leopold
and Ryan finally got together the king said, "The Congo must have
American engineers. They are the best in the world." Thus it came about
that Central Africa, like South Africa, came under the galvanizing hand
of the Yankee technical expert. At Kimberley and Johannesburg, however,
the task was comparatively easy. The mines were accessible and the
country was known. With Central Africa it was a different and more
dangerous matter. The land was wild, hostile natives abounded on all
sides, and going in was like firing a shot in the dark.
The American invasion was in two sections. One was the group of
engineers headed by Sydney H. Ball and R. D. L. Mohun, known as the
Ball-Mohun Expedition, which conducted the geological investigation. The
other was in charge of S. P. Verner, an American who had done
considerable pioneering in the Congo, and devoted itself entirely to
rubber. The latter venture was under the auspices of the American Congo
Company, which expected to employ the Mexican process in the Congo.
After several years the attempt was abandoned although the company still
exists.
I will briefly narrate its experience to show that the product which
raised the tempest around King Leopold's head and which for years was
synonymous with the name of the Congo, has practically ceased to be an
important commercial commodity in the Colony. The reason is obvious. In
Leopold's day nine-tenths of the world's supply of rubber was wild and
came from Brazil and the Congo. It cost about fifty cents a pound to
gather and sold for a dollar. Today more than ninety per cent of the
rubber supply is grown on plantations in the Dutch East Indies, the
Malay States, and the Straits Settlements, where it costs about twenty
cents a pound to gather and despite the big slump in price since the
war, is profitable. In the Congo there is still wild rubber and a
movement is under way to develop large plantations. Labor is scarce,
however, while in the East millions of coolies are available. This tells
the whole rubber story.
The Ball-Mohun Expedition was more successful than its mate for it
opened up a mineral empire and laid the foundations of the Little
America that you shall soon see. Mohun was administrative head and Ball
the technical head and chief engineer. Other members were Millard K.
Shaler, afterwards one of Hoover's most efficient aids in the relief of
Belgium, and Arthur F. Smith, geologists; Roland B. Oliver, topographer;
A. E. H. and C. A. Reid, and N. Janot, prospectors.
Mohun, who had been engaged on account of his knowledge of the country,
had been American Consul at Zanzibar and at Boma, and first left
diplomacy to fight the Arab slave-traders in the interior. When someone
asked him why he had quit the United States Government service to go on
a military mission he said, "I prefer killing Arabs in the interior to
killing time at Boma." He figured as one of Richard Harding Davis'
"Soldiers of Fortune" and was in every sense a unique personality.
You get some idea of the hazards that confronted the American pioneers
when I say that when they set forth for the Kasai region, which is the
southwestern part of the Congo, late in 1907, they were accompanied by a
battalion of native troops under Belgian officers. Often they had to
fight their way before they could take specimens. On one occasion Ball
was prospecting in a region hitherto uninvaded by the white man. He was
attacked by a large body of hostile savages and a pitched battle
followed. In informal Congo history this engagement is known as "The
Battle of Ball's Run," although Ball did no running. As recently as 1915
one of the Forminiere prospectors, E. G. Decker, was killed by the
fierce Batshoks, the most belligerent of the Upper Kasai tribes. The
Ball-Mohun group, which was the first of many expeditions, remained in
the field more than two years and covered a wide area.
Up to this time gold and copper were the only valuable minerals that had
been discovered in the Congo and the Americans naturally went after
them. Much to their surprise, they found diamonds and thereby opened up
a fresh source of wealth for the Colony. The first diamond was found at
_Mai Munene_, which means "Big Water," a considerable waterfall
discovered by Livingstone. This region, which is watered by the Kasai
River, became the center of what is now known as the Congo Diamond
Fields and remains the stronghold of American engineering and financial
enterprise in Central Africa. On a wooded height not far from the
headwaters of the Kasai, these path-finding Americans established a post
called Tshikapa, the name of a small river nearby. It is the capital of
Little America in the jungle and therefore became the objective of the
second stage of my Congo journey.
[Illustration: A BELLE OF THE CONGO]
[Illustration: WOMEN OF THE BATETELAS]
III
Kinshassa is nearly a thousand miles from Tshikapa. To get there I had
to retrace my way up the Congo as far as Kwamouth, where the Kasai
empties into the parent stream. I also found that it was necessary to
change boats at Dima and continue on the Kasai to Djoko Punda. Here
begins the jungle road to the diamond fields.
Up to this time I had enjoyed the best facilities that the Congo could
supply in the way of transport. Now I faced a trip that would not only
try patience but had every element of the unknown, which in the Congo
means the uncomfortable. Fortunately, the "Lusanga," one of the
Huileries du Congo Belge steamers, was about to start for the Kwilu
River, which branches off from the Kasai, and the company was kind
enough to order it to take me to Dima, which was off the prescribed
itinerary of the vessel.
On a brilliant morning at the end of June I set forth. Nelson was still
my faithful servant and his smile and teeth shone as resplendently as
ever. The only change in him was that his appetite for _chikwanga_ had
visibly increased. Somebody had told him at Kinshassa that the Kasai
country teemed with cannibals. Being one of the world's champion eaters,
he shrank from being eaten himself. I promised him an extra allowance of
food and a khaki uniform that I had worn in the war, and he agreed to
take a chance.
Right here let me give an evidence of the Congo native's astounding
quickness to grasp things. I do not refer to his light-fingered
propensities, however. When we got to Kinshassa Nelson knew scarcely a
word of the local dialect. When we left a week later, he could jabber
intelligently with any savage he met. On the four weeks' trip from
Elizabethville he had picked up enough French to make himself
understood. The Central African native has an aptitude for languages
that far surpasses that of the average white man.
I was the only passenger on the "Lusanga," which had been reconstructed
for Lord Leverhulme's trip through the Congo in 1914. I occupied the
suite installed for him and it was my last taste of luxury for many a
day. The captain, Albert Carrie, was a retired lieutenant in the British
Royal Navy, and the chief engineer was a Scotchman. The Congo River
seemed like an old friend as we steamed up toward Kwamouth. As soon as
we turned into the Kasai I found that conditions were different than on
the main river. There was an abundance of fuel, both for man and boat.
The daily goat steak of the Congo was relieved by duck and fish. The
Kasai region is thickly populated and I saw a new type of native,
lighter in colour than elsewhere, and more keen and intelligent.
The women of the Kasai are probably the most attractive in the Congo.
This applies particularly to the Batetelas, who are of light brown
colour. From childhood the females of this tribe have a sense of modesty
that is in sharp contrast with the nudity that prevails elsewhere
throughout the country. They swathe their bodies from neck to ankle with
gaily coloured calico. I am often asked if the scant attire in Central
Africa shocked me. I invariably reply by saying that the contemporary
feminine fashion of near-undress in America and Europe made me feel
that some of the chocolate-hued ladies of the jungle were almost
over-clothed!
The fourth day of my trip was also the American Fourth of July. Captain
Carrie and I celebrated by toasting the British and American Navies, and
it was not in Kasai water. This day also witnessed a somewhat remarkable
revelation of the fact that world economic unrest has penetrated to the
very heart of the primitive regions. While the wood-boys were getting
fuel at a native post, Carrie and I went ashore to take a walk and visit
a chief who had once been in Belgium. When we got back to the boat we
found that all the natives had suspended work and were listening to an
impassioned speech by one of the black wheelmen. All these boats have
native pilots. This boy, who only wore a loin cloth, was urging his
fellows not to work so hard. Among other things he said:
"The white man eats big food and takes a big sleep in the middle of the
day and you ought to do the same thing. The company that owns this boat
has much money and you should all be getting more wages."
Carrie stopped the harangue, fined the pilot a week's pay, and the men
went back to work, but the poison had been planted. This illuminating
episode is just one of the many evidences of industrial insurgency that
I found in Africa from the moment I struck Capetown. In the Rand gold
mining district, for example, the natives have been organized by British
agitators and it probably will not be long before Central Africa has the
I. W. W. in its midst! Certainly the "I Won't Works" already exist in
large numbers.
This essentially modern spirit was only one of the many surprises that
the Congo native disclosed. Another was the existence of powerful secret
societies which have codes, "grips," and pass-words. Some antedate the
white man, indulge in human sacrifice, and have branches in a dozen
sections. Although Central Africa is a land where the husband can stray
from home at will, the "lodge night" is thus available as an excuse for
domestic indiscretion.
The most terrible of these orders is the Society of the Leopard, formed
to provide a novel and devilish method of disposing of enemies. The
members wear leopard skins or spotted habits and throttle their foes
with a glove to which steel blades are affixed. The victim appears to
have been killed by the animal that cannot change its spots. To make the
illusion complete, the ground where the victim has lain is marked with a
stick whose end resembles the feet of the leopard.
The leopard skin has a curious significance in the Congo. For occasions
where the white man takes an oath on the Bible, the savage steps over
one of these skins to swear fealty. If two chiefs have had a quarrel and
make up, they tear a skin in two and throw the pieces into the river, to
show that the feud is rent asunder. It corresponds to the pipe of peace
of the American Indian.
Another secret society in the Congo is the Lubuki, whose initiation
makes riding the goat seem like a childish amusement. The candidate is
tied to a tree and a nest of black ants is distributed over his body. He
is released only after he is nearly stung to death. A repetition of this
jungle third degree is threatened for violation of any of the secrets of
the order, the main purpose of which is to graft on non-members for food
and other necessities.
In civilized life the members of a fraternal society are summoned to a
meeting by telephone or letter. In the Congo they are haled by the
tom-tom, which is the wireless of the woods. These huge drums have an
uncanny carrying power. The beats are like the dots and dashes of
telegraphy. All the native news of Central Africa is transmitted from
village to village in this way.
I could continue this narrative of native habits and customs
indefinitely but we must get back to the "Lusanga." On board was a real
character. He was Peter the capita. In the Congo every group of native
workmen is in charge of a capita, who would be designated a foreman in
this country. Life and varied experience had battered Peter sadly. He
spoke English, French, German, Portuguese, and half a dozen of the Congo
dialects. He learned German while a member of an African dancing team
that performed at the Winter Garden in Berlin. His German almost had a
Potsdam flavour. He told me that he had danced before the former Kaiser
and had met many members of the Teutonic nobility. Yet the thing that
stood out most vividly in his memory was the taste of German beer. He
sighed for it daily.
Six days after leaving Kinshassa I reluctantly bade farewell to Peter
and the "Lusanga" at Dima. Here I had the first piece of hard luck on
the whole trip. The little steamer that was to take me up the Kasai
River to Djoko Punda had departed five days before and I was forced to
wait until she returned. Fifteen years ago Dima was the wildest kind of
jungle. I found it a model, tropical post with dozens of brick houses, a
shipyard and machine shops, avenues of palm trees and a farm. It is the
headquarters of the Kasai Company in the Congo.
I had a brick bungalow to myself and ate with the Managing Director,
Monsieur Adrian Van den Hove. He knew no English and my alleged French
was pretty bad. Yet we met three times a day at the table and carried
on spirited conversations. There was only one English-speaking person
within a radius of a hundred miles and I had read all my English books.
I vented my impatience in walking, for I covered at least fifteen miles
through the jungle every day. This proceeding filled both the Belgians
and the natives with astonishment. The latter particularly could not
understand why a man walked about the country aimlessly. Usually a
native will only walk when he can move in the direction of food or
sleep. On these solitary trips I went through a country that still
abounds in buffalo. Occasionally you see an elephant. It is one thing to
watch a big tusker doing his tricks in a circus tent, but quite another
to hear him floundering through the woods, tearing off huge branches of
trees as he moves along with what seems to be an incredible speed for so
heavy an animal.
There came the glad Sunday--it was my thirteenth day at Dima--when I
heard the whistle of the steamboat. I dashed down to the beach and there
was the little forty-ton "Madeleine." I welcomed her as a long-lost
friend and this she proved to be. The second day afterwards I went
aboard and began a diverting chapter of my experience. The "Madeleine"
is a type of the veteran Congo boat. In the old days the Belgian
pioneers fought natives from its narrow deck. Despite incessant combat
with sand-banks, snags and swift currents--all these obstructions abound
in the Kasai River--she was still staunch. In command was the only
Belgian captain that I had in the Congo, and he had been on these waters
for twenty years with only one holiday in Europe during the entire time.
I occupied the alleged cabin-de-luxe, the large room that all these
boats must furnish in case an important State functionary wants to
travel. My fellow passengers were two Catholic priests and three Belgian
"agents," as the Congo factors are styled. I ate alone on the main deck
in front of my cabin, with Nelson in attendance.
Now began a journey that did not lack adventure. It was the end of the
dry season and the Kasai was lower than ever before. The channel was
almost a continuous sand-bank. We rested on one of them for a whole day.
I was now well into the domain of the hippopotamus. I am not
exaggerating when I say that the Kasai in places is alive with them. You
can shoot one of these monsters from the bridge of the river boats
almost as easily as you could pick off a sparrow from the limb of a park
tree. I got tired of watching them. The flesh of the hippopotamus is
unfit for white consumption, but the natives regard it as a luxury. The
white man who kills a hippo is immediately acclaimed a hero. One reason
is that with spears the black finds it difficult to get the better of
one of these animals.
Our first step was at a Lutheran Mission set in the middle of a populous
village. As we approached I saw the American flag hanging over the door
of the most pretentious mud and grass house. When I went ashore I found
that the missionaries--a man and his wife--were both American citizens.
The husband was a Swede who had gone out to Kansas in his boyhood to
work on a farm. There he married a Kansas girl, who now speaks English
with a Swedish accent. After spreading the gospel in China and
elsewhere, they settled down in this lonely spot on the Kasai River.
I was immediately impressed with the difference between the Congo River
and the Kasai. The Congo is serene, brooding, majestic, and fringed
with an endless verdure. The Kasai, although 1,500 miles in length, is
narrower and more pugnacious. Its brown banks and grim flanking
mountains offer a welcome change from the eternal green of the great
river that gives the Colony its name. The Kasai was discovered by
Livingstone in 1854.
I also got another change. Two days after I left Dima we were blanketed
with heavy fog every morning and the air was raw and chill. On the Kasai
you can have every experience of trans-Atlantic travel with the sole
exception of seasickness.
As I proceeded up the Kasai I found continued evidence of the advance in
price of every food commodity. The omnipresent chicken that fetched a
franc in 1914 now brings from five to ten. My old friend the goat has
risen from ten to thirty francs and he was as tough as ever, despite the
rise. But foodstuffs are only a small part of these Congo economic
troubles.
We have suffered for some time under the burden of our inseparable
companion, the High Cost of Living. It is slight compared with the High
Cost of Loving in the Congo. Here you touch a real hardship. Before the
war a first-class wife--all wives are bought--sold for fifty francs.
Today the market price for a choice spouse is two hundred francs and it
takes hard digging for the black man to scrape up this almost
prohibitive fee. Thus the High Cost of Matrimony enters the list of
universal distractions.
On the "Madeleine" was a fascinating black child named Nanda. He was
about five years old and strolled about the boat absolutely naked. Most
Congo parents are fond of their offspring but this particular youngster,
who was bright and alert, was adored by his father, the head fireman
on the vessel. One day I gave him a cake and it was the first piece of
sweet bread he had ever eaten. Evidently he liked it for afterwards he
approached me every hour with his little hands outstretched. I was
anxious to get a photograph of him in his natural state and took him
ashore ostensibly for a walk. One of my fellow passengers had a camera
and I asked him to come along. When the boy saw that he was about to be
snapped he rushed back to the boat yelling and howling. I did not know
what was the matter until he returned in about ten minutes, wearing an
abbreviated pair of pants and a short coat. He was willing to walk about
nude but when it came to being pictured he suddenly became modest. This
state of mind, however, is not general in the Colony.
[Illustration: FISHERMEN ON THE SANKURU]
[Illustration: THE FALLS OF THE SANKURU]
The African child is fond of playthings which shows that one touch of
amusement makes all childhood kin. He will swim half a mile through a
crocodile-infested river to get an empty tin can or a bottle. One of the
favorite sports on the river boats is to throw boxes or bottles into the
water and then watch the children race for them. On the Congo the
fathers sometimes manufacture rude reproductions of steamboats for their
children and some of them are astonishingly well made.
Exactly twelve days after we left Dima the captain told me that we were
nearing Djoko Punda. The country was mountainous and the river had
become swifter and deeper for we were approaching Wissmann Falls, the
end of navigation for some distance. These falls are named for Herman
Wissmann, a lieutenant in the Prussian Army who in the opinion of such
authorities as Sir Harry Johnston, ranks third in the hierarchy of early
Congo explorers. Stanley, of course, comes first and Grenfell second.
On account of the lack of certain communication save by runner in this
part of Africa--the traveller can always beat a wireless message--I was
unable to send any word of my coming and I wondered whom and what I
would find there. I had the strongest possible letters to all the
Forminiere officials but these pieces of paper could not get me on to
Tshikapa. I needed something that moved on wheels. I was greatly
relieved, therefore, when we came in sight of the post to see two
unmistakable American figures standing on the bank. What cheered me
further were two American motor cars nearby.
The two Americans proved to be G. D. Moody and J. E. Robison. The former
is Assistant Chief Engineer of the Forminiere in the field and the
latter is in charge of the motor transport. They gave me a genuine
American welcome and that night I dined in Robison's grass house off
American food that had travelled nearly fifteen thousand miles. I heard
the first unadulterated Yankee conversation that had fallen on my ears
since I left Elizabethville two months before. When I said that I wanted
to push on to Tshikapa at once, Moody said, "We will leave at five in
the morning in one of the jitneys and be in Tshikapa tomorrow night."
Moody was an incorrigible optimist as I was soon to discover.
IV
At dawn the next morning and after a breakfast of hot cakes we set out.
Nelson was in a great state of excitement because he had never ridden in
an automobile before. He was destined not to enjoy that rare privilege
very long. The rough highway hewed by American engineers through the
thick woods was a foot deep in sand and before we had proceeded a
hundred yards the car got stuck and all hands save Moody got out to push
it on. Moody was the chauffeur and had to remain at the wheel. Draped in
fog, the jungle about me had an almost eerie look. But aesthetic and
emotional observations had to give way to practicality. Laboriously the
jitney snorted through the sand and bumped over tree stumps. After a
strenuous hour and when we had reached the open country, the machine
gave a groan and died on the spot. We were on a broad plain on the
outskirts of a village and the broiling sun beat down on us.
The African picaninny has just as much curiosity as his American brother
and in ten minutes the whole juvenile population was assembled around
us. Soon the grown-ups joined the crowd. Naked women examined the tires
as if they were articles of food and black warriors stalked about with
the same sort of "I told you so" expression that you find in the face of
the average American watching a motor car breakdown. Human nature is the
same the world over. The automobile is a novelty in these parts and when
the Forminiere employed the first ones the natives actually thought it
was an animal that would finally get tired and quit. Mine stopped
without getting tired!
For six hours Moody laboured under the car while I sat in the glaring
sun alongside the road and cursed fate. Nelson spent his time eating all
the available food in sight. Finally, at three o'clock Moody gave up and
said, "We'll have to make the rest of this trip in a teapoy."
A teapoy is usually a hammock slung on a pole carried on the shoulders
of natives. We sent a runner in to Robison, who came back with two
teapoys and a squad of forty blacks to transport us. The "teapoy boy,"
as he is called, is as much a part of the African scheme of life as a
driver or a chauffeur is in America. He must be big, strong, and sound
of wind, because he is required to go at a run all the time. For any
considerable journey each teapoy has a squad of eight men who alternate
on the run without losing a step. They always sing as they go.
I had never ridden in a teapoy before and now I began a continuous trip
in one which lasted eight hours. Night fell almost before we got started
and it was a strange sensation to go sailing through the silent black
woods and the excited villages where thousands of naked persons of all
sizes turned out to see the show. After two hours I began to feel as if
I had been tossed up for a week in an army blanket. The wrist watch that
I had worn throughout the war and which had withstood the fiercest shell
shocks and bombardments, was jolted to a standstill. After the fourth
hour I became accustomed to the movement and even went to sleep for a
while. Midnight brought us to Kabambaie and the banks of the Kasai,
where I found food and sanctuary at a Forminiere post. Here the
thousands of tons of freight that come up the river from Dima by
steamer and which are carried by motor trucks, ox teams, and on the
heads of natives to this point, are placed on whale-boats and sent up
the river to Tshikapa.
Before going to bed I sent a runner to Tshikapa to notify Donald Doyle,
Managing Engineer of the Forminiere in the field, that I was coming and
to send a motor car out to meet me. I promised this runner much
_matabeesh_, which is the African word for a tip, if he would run the
whole way. The distance through the jungle was exactly seventy-two miles
and he covered it, as I discovered when I reached Tshikapa, in exactly
twenty-six hours, a remarkable feat. The _matabeesh_ I bestowed, by the
way, was three francs (about eighteen cents) and the native regarded it
as a princely gift because it amounted to nearly half a month's wages.
By this time my confidence in the African jitney was somewhat shaken. A
new motor-boat had just been received at Kabambaie and I thought I would
take a chance with it and start up the Kasai the next day. Moody,
assisted by several other engineers, set to work to get it in shape. At
noon of the second day, when we were about to start, the engine went on
a sympathetic strike with the jitney, and once more I was halted. I said
to Moody, "I am going to Tshikapa without any further delay if I have to
walk the whole way." This was not necessary for, thanks to the
Forminiere organization, which always has hundreds of native porters at
Kabambaie, I was able to organize a caravan in a few hours.
After lunch we departed with a complete outfit of tents, bedding, and
servants. The black personnel was thirty porters and a picked squad of
thirty-five teapoy boys to carry Moody and myself. Usually these
caravans have a flag. I had none so the teapoy capita fished out a big
red bandanna handkerchief, which he tied to a stick. With the crimson
banner flying and the teapoy carriers singing and playing rude native
instruments, we started off at a trot. I felt like an explorer going
into the unknown places. It was the real thing in jungle experience.
From two o'clock until sunset we trotted through the wilds, which were
almost thrillingly beautiful. In Africa there is no twilight, and
darkness swoops down like a hawk. All afternoon the teapoy men, after
their fashion, carried on what was literally a running crossfire of
questions among themselves. They usually boast of their strength and
their families and always discuss the white man they are carrying and
his characteristics. I heard much muttering of _Mafutta Mingi_ and I
knew long before we stopped that my weight was not a pleasant topic.
I will try to reproduce some of the conversation that went on that
afternoon between my carriers. I will not give the native words but will
translate into English the questions and answers as they were hurled
back and forth. By way of explanation let me say beforehand that there
is no word in any of the Congo dialects for "yes." Affirmation is always
expressed by a grunt. Here is the conversation:
"Men of the white men."
"Ugh."
"Does he lie?"
"He lies not."
"Does he shirk?"
"No."
"Does he steal?"
"No."
"Am I strong?"
"Ugh."
"Have I a good liver?"
"Ugh."
[Illustration: A CONGO DIAMOND MINE]
[Illustration: HOW THE MINES ARE WORKED]
* * * * *
So it goes. One reason why these men talk so much is that all their work
must be accompanied by some sound. Up in the diamond fields I watched a
native chopping wood. Every time the steel blade buried itself in the
log the man said: "Good axe. Cut deep." He talked to the weapon just as
he would speak to a human being. It all goes to show that the Congo
native is simply a child grown to man's stature.
The fact that I had to resort to the teapoy illustrates the
unreliability of mechanical transport in the wilds. I had tried in vain
to make progress with an automobile and a motor boat, and was forced as
a last resort to get back to the human being as carrier. He remains the
unfailing beast of burden despite all scientific progress.
I slept that night in a native house on the outskirts of a village. It
was what is called a _chitenda_, which is a grass structure open at all
the sides. The last white man to occupy this domicile was Louis Franck,
the Belgian Minister of the Colonies, who had gone up to the Forminiere
diamond fields a few weeks before. He used the same jitney that I had
started in, and it also broke down with him. Moody was his chauffeur.
They made their way on foot to this village. Moody told the chief that
he had the real _Bula Matadi_ with him. The chief solemnly looked at
Franck and said, "He is no _Bula Matadi_ because he does not wear any
medals." Most high Belgian officials wear orders and the native dotes on
shiny ornaments. The old savage refused to sell the travellers any food
and the Minister had to share the beans of the negro boys who
accompanied him.
Daybreak saw us on the move. For hours we swung through dense forest
which made one think of the beginnings of the world when the big trees
were king. The vastness and silence were only comparable to the brooding
mystery of the jungle nights. You have no feel of fear but oddly enough,
a strange sense of security.
I realized as never before, the truth that lay behind one of Stanley's
convictions. He once said, "No luxury of civilization can be equal to
the relief from the tyranny of custom. The wilds of a great city are
greater than the excruciating tyranny of a small village. The heart of
Africa is infinitely preferable to the heart of the world's largest
city. If the way were easier, millions would fly to it."
Despite this enthralling environment I kept wondering if that runner had
reached Doyle and if a car had been sent out. At noon we emerged from
the forest into a clearing. Suddenly Moody said, "I hear an automobile
engine." A moment later I saw a small car burst through the trees far
ahead and I knew that relief was at hand. Dr. John Dunn, the physician
at Tshikapa, had started at dawn to meet me, and my teapoy adventures,
for the moment, were ended. Dr. Livingstone at Ujiji had no keener
feeling of relief at the sight of Stanley that I felt when I shook the
hand of this bronzed, Middle Western medico.
We lunched by the roadside and afterwards I got into Dunn's car and
resumed the journey. I sent the porters and teapoy men back to
Kabambaie. Late in the afternoon we reached the bluffs overlooking the
Upper Kasai. Across the broad, foaming river was Tshikapa. If I had not
known that it was an American settlement, I would have sensed its
sponsorship. It radiated order and neatness. The only parallels in the
Congo are the various areas of the Huileries du Congo Belge.
V
Tshikapa, which means "belt," is a Little America in every sense. It
commands the junction of the Tshikapa and Kasai rivers. There are dozens
of substantial brick dwellings, offices, warehouses, machine-shops and a
hospital. For a hundred miles to the Angola border and far beyond, the
Yankee has cut motor roads and set up civilization generally. You see
American thoroughness on all sides, even in the immense native villages
where the mine employees live. Instead of having compounds the company
encourages the blacks to establish their own settlements and live their
own lives. It makes them more contented and therefore more efficient,
and it establishes a colony of permanent workers. When the native is
confined to a compound he gets restless and wants to go back home. The
Americans are helping to solve the Congo labour problem.
At Tshikapa you hear good old United States spoken with every dialectic
flavour from New England hardness to Texas drawl. In charge of all the
operations in the field was Doyle, a clear-cut, upstanding American
engineer who had served his apprenticeship in the Angola jungles, where
he was a member of one of the first American prospecting parties. With
his wife he lived in a large brick bungalow and I was their guest in it
during my entire stay in the diamond fields. Mrs. Doyle embodied the
same courage that animated Mrs. Wallace. Too much cannot be said of the
faith and fortitude of these women who share their husband's fortunes
out at the frontiers of civilization.
At Tshikapa there were other white women, including Mrs. Dunn, who had
recently converted her hospitable home into a small maternity hospital.
Only a few weeks before my arrival Mrs. Edwin Barclay, wife of the
manager of the Mabonda Mine, had given birth to a girl baby under its
roof, and I was taken over at once to see the latest addition to the
American colony.
On the day of my arrival the natives employed at this mine had sent Mrs.
Barclay a gift of fifty newly-laid eggs as a present for the baby.
Accompanying it was a rude note scrawled by one of the foremen who had
attended a Presbyterian mission school. The birth of a white baby is
always a great event in the Congo. When Mrs. Barclay returned to her
home a grand celebration was held and the natives feasted and danced in
honour of the infant.
There is a delightful social life at Tshikapa. Most of the mines, which
are mainly in charge of American engineers, are within a day's
travelling distance in a teapoy and much nearer by automobile. Some of
the managers have their families with them, and they foregather at the
main post every Sunday. On Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July, and
Christmas there is always a big rally which includes a dance and
vaudeville show in the men's mess hall. The Stars and Stripes are
unfurled to the African breeze and the old days in the States recalled.
It is real community life on the fringe of the jungle.
I was struck with the big difference between the Congo diamond fields
and those at Kimberley. In South Africa the mines are gaping gashes in
the earth thousands of feet wide and thousands deep. They are all
"pipes" which are formed by volcanic eruption. These pipes are the real
source of the diamonds. The precious blue ground which contains the
stones is spread out on immense "floors" to decompose under sun and
rain. Afterwards it is broken in crushers and goes through a series of
mechanical transformations. The diamonds are separated from the
concentrates on a pulsating table covered with vaseline. The gems cling
to the oleaginous substance. It is an elaborate process.
The Congo mines are alluvial and every creek and river bed is therefore
a potential diamond mine. The only labour necessary is to remove the
upper layer of earth,--the "overburden" as it is termed--dig up the
gravel, shake it out, and you have the concentrate from which a naked
savage can pick the precious stones. They are precisely like the mines
of German South-West Africa. So far no "pipes" have been discovered in
the Kasai basin. Many indications have been found, and it is inevitable
that they will be located in time. The diamond-bearing earth sometimes
travels very far from its base, and the American engineers in the Congo
with whom I talked are convinced that these volcanic formations which
usually produce large stones, lie far up in the Kasai hills. The
diamond-bearing area of the Belgian Congo and Angola covers nearly eight
thousand square miles and only five per cent has been prospected. There
is not the slightest doubt that one of the greatest diamond fields ever
known is in the making here.
Now for a real human interest detail. At Kimberley the Zulus and Kaffirs
know the value of the diamond and there was formerly considerable
filching. All the workers are segregated in barbed wire compounds and
kept under constant surveillance. At the end of their period of
service they remain in custody for two weeks in order to make certain
that they have not swallowed any stones.
[Illustration: GRAVEL CARRIERS AT A CONGO MINE]
[Illustration: CONGO NATIVES PICKING OUT DIAMONDS]
The Congo natives do not know what a diamond really is. The majority
believe that it is simply a piece of glass employed in the making of
bottles, and there are a good many bottles of various kinds in the
Colony. Hence no watch is kept on the hundreds of Balubas who are mainly
employed in the task of picking out the glittering jewels. During the
past five years, when the product in the Congo fields has grown
steadily, not a single karat has been stolen. The same situation obtains
in the Angola fields.
In company with Doyle I visited the eight principal mines in the Congo
field and saw the process of mining in all its stages of advancement. At
the Kisele development, which is almost within sight of Tshikapa, the
small "jigs" in which the gravel is shaken, are operated by hand. This
is the most primitive method. At Mabonda the concentrate pans are
mounted on high platforms. Here the turning is also by hand but on a
larger scale. The Ramona mine has steam-driven pans, while at Tshisundu,
which is in charge of William McMillan, I witnessed the last word in
alluvial diamond mining. At this place Forminiere has erected an
imposing power plant whose tall smokestack dominates the surrounding
forest. You get a suggestion of Kimberley for the excavation is immense,
and there is the hum and movement of a pretentious industrial
enterprise. Under the direction of William McMillan a research
department has been established which is expected to influence and
possibly change alluvial operations.
Our luncheon at Tshisundu was attended by Mrs. McMillan, another
heroine of that rugged land. Alongside sat her son, born in 1918 at one
of the mines in the field and who was as lusty and animated a youngster
as I have seen. His every movement was followed by the eagle eye of his
native nurse who was about twelve years old. These native attendants
regard it as a special privilege to act as custodians of a white child
and invariably a close intimacy is established between them. They really
become playmates.
It is difficult to imagine that these Congo diamond mines were mere
patches of jungle a few years ago. The task of exploitation has been an
immense one. Before the simplest mine can be operated the dense forest
must be cleared and the river beds drained. Every day the mine manager
is confronted with some problem which tests his ingenuity and resource.
Only the Anglo-Saxon could hold his own amid these trying circumstances.
No less difficult were the natives themselves. Before the advent of the
American engineers, industry was unknown in the Upper Kasai. The only
organized activity was the harvesting of rubber and that was rather a
haphazard performance. With the opening of the mines thousands of
untrained blacks had to be drawn into organized service. They had never
even seen the implements of labour employed by the whites. When they
were given wheel-barrows and told to fill and transport the earth, they
placed the barrows on their heads and carried them to the designated
place. They repeated the same act with shovels.
The Yankees have thoroughly impressed the value and the nobility of
labour. I asked one of the employes at a diamond mine what he thought of
the Americans. His reply was, "Americans and work were born on the same
day."
The labour of opening up the virgin land was only one phase. Every piece
of machinery and every tin of food had to be transported thousands of
miles and this condition still obtains. The motor road from Djoko Punda
to Kabambaie was hacked by American engineers through the jungle. It is
comparatively easy to get supplies to Djoko Punda although everything
must be shifted from railway to boat several times. Between Djoko Punda
and Tshikapa the material is hauled in motor trucks and ox-drawn wagons
or conveyed on the heads of porters to Kabambaie. Some of it is
transshipped to whale-boats and paddled up to Tshikapa, and the
remainder continues in the wagons overland. During 1920 seven hundred
and fifty tons of freight were hauled from Djoko Punda in this laborious
way.
At the time of my visit there were twelve going mines in the Congo
field, and three new ones were in various stages of advancement. The
Forminiere engineers also operate the diamond concessions of the Kasai
Company and the Bas Congo Katanga Railway which will run from the
Katanga to Kinshassa.
More than twelve thousand natives are employed throughout the Congo area
alone and nowhere have I seen a more contented lot of blacks. The
Forminiere obtains this good-will by wisely keeping the price of trade
goods such as salt and calico at the pre-war rate. It is an admirable
investment. This merchandise is practically the legal tender of the
jungle. With a cup of salt a black man can start an endless chain of
trading that will net him a considerable assortment of articles in time.
The principal natives in the Upper Kasai are the Balubas, who bear the
same relation to this area as the Bangalas do to the Upper Congo. The
men are big, strong, and fairly intelligent. The principal tribal mark
is the absence of the two upper central incisor teeth. These are usually
knocked out in early boyhood. No Baluba can marry until he can show this
gaping space in his mouth. Although the natives abuse their teeth by
removing them or filing them down to points, they take excellent care of
the remaining ivories. Many polish the teeth with a stick and wash their
mouths several times a day. The same cannot be said of many civilized
persons.
I observed that the families in the Upper Kasai were much more numerous
than elsewhere in the Congo. A Bangala or Batetela woman usually has one
child and then goes out of the baby business. In the region dominated by
the Forminiere it is no infrequent thing to see three or four children
in a household. A woman who bears twins is not only hailed as a real
benefactress but the village looks upon the occasion as a good omen.
This is in direct contrast with the state of mind in East Africa, for
example, where one twin is invariably killed.
I encountered an interesting situation concerning twins when I visited
the Mabonda Mine. This is one of the largest in the Congo field.
Barclay, the big-boned American manager, formerly conducted engineering
operations in the southern part of America. He therefore knows the Negro
psychology and the result is that he conducts a sort of amiable and
paternalistic little kingdom all his own. The natives all come to him
with their troubles, and he is their friend, philosopher and guide.
After lunch one day he asked me if I would like to talk to a native who
had a story. When I expressed assent he took me out to a shed nearby and
there I saw a husky Baluba who was labouring under some excitement. The
reason was droll. Four days before, his wife had given birth to twins
and there was great excitement in the village. The natives, however,
refused to have anything to do with him because, to use their phrase,
"he was too strong." His wife did not come under this ban and was the
center of jubilation and gesticulation. The poor husband was a sort of
heroic outcast and had to come to Barclay to get some food and a drink
of palm wine to revive his drooping spirits.
The output in the Congo diamond area has grown from a few thousand
karats to hundreds of thousands of karats a year. The stones are small
but clear and brilliant. This yield is an unsatisfactory evidence of the
richness of the domain. The ore reserves are more than ten per cent of
the yearly output and the surface of the concession has scarcely been
scratched. Experienced diamond men say that a diamond in the ground is
worth two in the market. It is this element of the unknown that gives
the Congo field one of its principal potentialities.
The Congo diamond fields are merely a part of the Forminiere
treasure-trove. Over in Angola the concession is eight times larger in
area, the stones are bigger, and with adequate exploitation should
surpass the parent production in a few years. Six mines are already in
operation and three more have been staked out. The Angola mines are
alluvial and are operated precisely like those in Belgian territory. The
managing engineer is Glenn H. Newport, who was with Decker in the fatal
encounter with Batchoks. The principal post of this area is Dundu, which
is about forty miles from the Congo border.
As I looked at these mines with their thousands of grinning natives and
heard the rattle of gravel in the "jigs" my mind went back to Kimberley
and the immense part that its glittering wealth played in determining
the economic fate of South Africa. Long before the gold "rush" opened up
in the Rand, the diamond mines had given the southern section of the
continent a rebirth of prosperity. Will the Congo mines perform the same
service for the Congo? In any event they will be a determining factor in
the future world diamond output.
No record of America in the Congo would be complete without a reference
to the high part that our missionaries have played in the
spiritualization of the land. The stronghold of our religious influence
is also the Upper Kasai Basin. In 1890 two devoted men, Samuel N.
Lapsley, a white clergyman, and William H. Sheppard, a Negro from
Alabama, established the American Presbyterian Congo Mission at Luebo
which is about one hundred miles from Tshikapa straight across country.
The valley of the Sankuru and Kasai Rivers is one of the most densely
populated of all the Belgian Congo. It is inhabited by five powerful
tribes--the Baluba, the Bena Lulua, the Bakuba, the Bakete and the
Zappozaps, and their united population is one-fifth of that of the whole
Colony. Hence it was a fruitful field for labour but a hard one. From an
humble beginning the work has grown until there are now seven important
stations with scores of white workers, hundreds of native evangelists,
one of the best equipped hospitals in Africa, and a manual training
school that is teaching the youth of the land how to become prosperous
and constructive citizens. Under its inspiration the population of Luebo
has grown from two thousand in 1890 to eighteen thousand in 1920.
The two fundamental principles underlying this splendid undertaking
have been well summed up as follows: "First, the attainment of a Church
supported by the natives through the thrift and industry of their own
hands. The time is past when we may merely teach the native to become a
Christian and then leave him in his poverty and squalor where he can be
of little or no use to the Church. Second, the preparation of the native
to take the largest and most influential position possible in the
development of the Colony. Practically the only thing open to the
Congolese is along the mechanical and manual lines."
[Illustration: WASHING OUT GRAVEL]
[Illustration: DONALD DOYLE (LEFT) AND MR. MARCOSSON]
One of the noblest actors in this American missionary drama was the late
Rev. W. M. Morrison, who went out to the Congo in 1896. Realizing that
the most urgent need was a native dictionary, he reduced the
Baluba-Lulua language to writing. In 1906 he published a Dictionary and
Grammar which included the Parables of Christ, the Miracles, the
Epistles to the Romans in paraphrase. He also prepared a Catechism based
on the Shorter and Child's Catechisms. This gave the workers in the
field a definite instrument to employ, and it has been a beneficent
influence in shaping the lives and morals of the natives.
One phase of the labours of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission
discloses the bondage of the Congo native to the Witch Doctor. The
moment he feels sick he rushes to the sorcerer, usually a bedaubed
barbarian who practices weird and mysterious rites, and who generally
succeeds in killing off his patient. More than ninety per cent of the
pagan population of Africa not only acknowledges but fears the powers of
the Witch Doctor. Only two-fifths of one per cent are under Christian
medical treatment. The Presbyterian Missionaries, therefore, from the
very outset have sought to bring the native into the ken of the white
physician. It is a slow process. One almost unsurmountable obstacle lies
in the uncanny grip that the "medicine man" wields in all the tribes.
It is largely due to the missionaries that the practice of handshaking
has been introduced in the Congo. Formerly the custom was to clap hands
when exchanging greetings. The blacks saw the Anglo-Saxons grasp hands
when they met and being apt imitators in many things, they started to do
likewise. One of the first things that impressed me in Africa was the
extraordinary amount of handshaking that went on when the people met
each other even after a separation of only half an hour.
VI
I had originally planned to leave Africa at St. Paul de Loanda in
Portuguese West Africa, where Thomas F. Ryan and his Belgian associates
have acquired the new oil wells and set up still another important
outpost of our overseas financial venturing. But so much time had been
consumed in reaching Tshikapa that I determined to return to Kinshassa,
go on to Matadi, and catch the boat for Europe at the end of August.
There were two ways of getting back to Kabambaie. One was to go in an
automobile through the jungle, and the other by boat down the Kasai.
Between Kabambaie and Djoko Punda there is practically no navigation on
account of the succession of dangerous rapids. Since my faith in the
jitney was still impaired I chose the river route and it gave me the
most stirring of all my African experiences. The two motor boats at
Tshikapa were out of commission so I started at daybreak in a whale-boat
manned by forty naked native paddlers.
The fog still hung over the countryside and the scene as we got under
way was like a Rackham drawing of goblins and ghosts. I sat forward in
the boat with the ranks of singing, paddling blacks behind me. From the
moment we started and until I landed, the boys kept up an incessant
chanting. One of their number sat forward and pounded the iron gunwale
with a heavy stick. When he stopped pounding the paddlers ceased their
efforts. The only way to make the Congo native work is to provide him
with noise.
All day we travelled down the river through schools of hippopotami, some
of them near enough for me to throw a stone into the cavernous mouths.
The boat capita told me that he would get to Kabambaie by sundown. Like
the average New York restaurant waiter, he merely said what he thought
his listener wanted to hear. I fervently hoped he was right because we
not only had a series of rapids to shoot up-river, but at Kabambaie is a
seething whirlpool that has engulfed hundreds of natives and their
boats. At sunset we had only passed through the first of the troubled
zones. Nightfall without a moon found me still moving, and with the
swirling eddy far ahead.
I had many close calls during the war. They ranged from the first-line
trenches of France, Belgium, and Italy to the mine fields of the North
Sea while a winter gale blew. I can frankly say that I never felt such
apprehension as on the face of those surging waters, with black night
and the impenetrable jungle about me. The weird singing of the paddlers
only heightened the suspense. I thought that every tight place would be
my last. Finally at eight o'clock, and after it seemed that I had spent
years on the trip, we bumped up against the shore of Kabambaie, within a
hundred feet of the fatal spot.
The faithful Moody, who preceded me, had revived life in the jonah
jitney and at dawn the next day we started at full speed and reached
Djoko Punda by noon. The "Madeleine" was waiting for me with steam up,
for I sent a runner ahead. I had ordered Nelson back from Kabambaie
because plenty of servants were available there. He spent his week of
idleness at Djoko Punda in exploring every food known to the country. At
one o'clock I was off on the first real stage of my homeward journey.
The swift current made the downward trip much faster than the upward and
I was not sorry.
As we neared Basongo the captain came to me and said, "I see two
Americans standing on the bank. Shall I take them aboard?"
Almost before I could say that I would be delighted, we were within
hailing distance of the post. An American voice with a Cleveland, Ohio,
accent called out to me and asked my name. When I told him, he said,
"I'll give you three copies of the _Saturday Evening Post_ if you will
take us down to Dima. We have been stranded here for nearly three weeks
and want to go home."
I yelled back that they were more than welcome for I not only wanted to
help out a pair of countrymen in distress but I desired some
companionship on the boat. They were Charles H. Davis and Henry
Fairbairn, both Forminiere engineers who had made their way overland
from the Angola diamond fields. Only one down-bound Belgian boat had
passed since their arrival and it was so crowded with Belgian officials
on their way to Matadi to catch the August steamer for Europe, that
there was no accommodation for them. By this time they were joined by a
companion in misfortune, an American missionary, the Rev. Roy Fields
Cleveland, who was attached to the Mission at Luebo. He had come to
Basongo on the little missionary steamer, "The Lapsley," and sent it
back, expecting to take the Belgian State boat. Like the engineers, he
could get no passage.
Davis showed his appreciation of my rescue of the party by immediately
handing over the three copies of the Post, which were more than seven
months old and which had beguiled his long nights in the field.
Cleveland did his bit in the way of gratitude by providing hot griddle
cakes every morning. He had some American cornmeal and he had taught his
native servant how to produce the real article.
At Dima I had the final heart-throb of the trip. I had arranged to take
the "Fumu N'Tangu," a sister ship of the "Madeleine," from this point to
Kinshassa. When I arrived I found that she was stuck on a sandbank one
hundred miles down the river. My whole race against time to catch the
August steamer would have been futile if I could not push on to
Kinshassa at once.
Happily, the "Yser," the State boat that had left Davis, Fairbairn, and
Cleveland high and dry at Basongo, had put in at Dima the day before to
repair a broken paddle-wheel and was about to start. I beat the
"Madeleine's" gangplank to the shore and tore over to the Captain of the
"Yser." When I told him I had to go to Kinshassa he said, "I cannot take
you. I only have accommodations for eight people and am carrying forty."
I flashed my royal credentials on him and he yielded. I got the sofa, or
rather the bench called a sofa, in his cabin.
On the "Yser" I found Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. Crane, both Southerners,
who were returning to the United States after eight years at service at
one of the American Presbyterian Mission Stations. With them were their
two youngest children, both born in the Congo. The eldest girl, who was
five years old, could only speak the Baluba language. From her infancy
her nurses had been natives and she was facing the problem of going to
America for the first time without knowing a word of English. It was
quaintly amusing to hear her jabber with the wood-boys and the firemen
on board and with the people of the various villages where we
stopped.
[Illustration: THE PARK AT BOMA]
[Illustration: A STREET IN MATADI]
The Cranes were splendid types of the American missionary workers for
they were human and companionable. I had found Cleveland of the same
calibre. Like many other men I had an innate prejudice against the
foreign church worker before I went to Africa. I left with a strong
admiration for him, and with it a profound respect.
Kinshassa looked good to me when we arrived after four days' travelling,
but I did not tarry long. I was relieved to find that I was in ample
time to catch the August steamer at Matadi. It was at Kinshassa that I
learned of the nominations of Cox and Harding for the Presidency,
although the news was months old.
The morning after I reached Stanley Pool I boarded a special car on the
historic narrow-gauge railway that runs from Kinshassa to Matadi. At the
station I was glad to meet Major and Mrs. Wallace, who like myself were
bound for home. I invited them to share my car and we pulled out. On
this railway, as on all other Congo lines, the passengers provide their
own food. The Wallaces had their servant whom I recognized as one of the
staff at Alberta. Nelson still held the fort for me. Between us we
mobilized an elaborate lunch fortified by fruit that we bought at one of
the many stations where we halted.
We spent the night at the hotel at Thysville high in the mountains and
where it was almost freezing cold. This place is named for General
Albert Thys, who was attached to the colonial administration of King
Leopold and who founded the Compagnie du Congo Pour le Commerce et
l'Industrie, the "Queen-Dowager," as it is called, of all the Congo
companies. His most enduring monument, however, is the Chemin de Fer du
Congo Matadi-Stanley Pool. He felt with Stanley that there could be no
development of the Congo without a railway between Matadi and Stanley
Pool.
The necessity was apparent. At Matadi, which is about a hundred miles
from the sea, navigation on the Congo River ceases because here begins a
succession of cataracts that extend almost as far as Leopoldville. In
the old days all merchandise had to be carried in sixty-pound loads to
Stanley Pool on the heads of natives. The way is hard for it is up and
down hill and traverses swamps and morasses. Every year ten thousand men
literally died in their tracks. The human loss was only one detail of
the larger loss of time.
Under the stimulating leadership of General Thys, the railway was
started in 1890 and was opened for traffic eight and a half years later.
Perhaps no railway in the world took such heavy toll. It is two hundred
and fifty miles in length and every kilometer cost a white life and
every meter a black one. Only the graves of the whites are marked. You
can see the unending procession of headstones along the right of way.
During its construction the project was bitterly assailed. The wiseacres
contended that it was visionary, impracticable, and impossible. In this
respect it suffered the same experience as all the other pioneering
African railways and especially those of Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast,
Uganda, and the Soudan.
The scenery between Thysville and Matadi is noble and inspiring. The
track winds through grim highlands and along lovely valleys. The hills
are rich with colour, and occasionally you can see a frightened antelope
scurrying into cover in the woods. As you approach Matadi the landscape
takes on a new and more rugged beauty. Almost before you realize it,
you emerge from a curve in the mountains and the little town so
intimately linked with Stanley's early trials as civilizer, lies before
you.
Matadi is built on a solid piece of granite. The name is a version of
the word _matari_ which means rock. In certain parts of Africa the
letter "r" is often substituted for "d." Stanley's native name was in
reality "Bula Matari," but on account of the license that I have
indicated he is more frequently known as "Bula Matadi," the title now
bestowed on all officials in the Congo. It was at Matadi that Stanley
received the designation because he blasted a road through the rocks
with dynamite.
With its winding and mountainous streets and its polyglot population,
Matadi is a picturesque spot. It is the goal of every official through
the long years of his service in the bush for at this place he boards
the steamer that takes him to Europe. This is the pleasant side of the
picture. On the other hand, Matadi is where the incoming ocean traveller
first sets foot on Congo soil. If it happens to be the wet season the
foot is likely to be scorched for it is by common consent one of the
hottest spots in all the universe. That well-known fable about frying an
egg in the sun is an every-day reality here six months of the year.
Matadi is the administrative center of the Lower Congo railway which has
extensive yards, repair-shops, and hospitals for whites and blacks.
Nearby are the storage tanks and pumping station of the oil pipe line
that extends from Matadi to Kinshassa. It was installed just before the
Great War and has only been used for one shipment of fluid. With the
outbreak of hostilities it was impossible to get petroleum. Now that
peace has come, its operations will be resumed because it is planned to
convert many of the Congo River steamers into oil-burners.
Tied up at a Matadi quay was "The Schoodic," one of the United States
Shipping Board war-built freighters. The American flag at her stern gave
me a real thrill for with the exception of the solitary national emblem
I had seen at Tshikapa it was the first I had beheld since I left
Capetown. I lunched several times on board and found the international
personnel so frequent in our merchant marine. The captain was a native
of the West Indies, the first mate had been born in Scotland, the chief
engineer was a Connecticut Yankee, and the steward a Japanese. They were
a happy family though under the Stars and Stripes and we spent many
hours together spinning yarns and wishing we were back home.
In the Congo nothing ever moves on schedule time. I expected to board
the steamer immediately after my arrival at Matadi and proceed to
Antwerp. There was the usual delay, and I had to wait a week. Hence the
diversion provided by "The Schoodic" was a godsend.
The blessed day came when I got on "The Anversville" and changed from
the dirt and discomfort of the river boat and the colonial hotel to the
luxury of the ocean vessel. It was like stepping into paradise to get
settled once more in an immaculate cabin with its shining brass bedstead
and the inviting bathroom adjacent. I spent an hour calmly sitting on
the divan and revelling in this welcome environment. It was almost too
good to be true.
Nelson remained with me to the end. He helped the stewards place my
luggage in the ship, which was the first liner he had ever seen. He was
almost appalled at its magnitude. I asked him if he would like to
accompany me to Europe. He shook his head solemnly and said, "No,
master. The ship is too big and I am afraid of it. I want to go home to
Elizabethville." As a parting gift I gave him more money than he had
ever before seen in his life. It only elicited this laconic response,
"Now I am rich enough to buy a wife." With these words he bade me
farewell.
[Illustration: A GENERAL VIEW OF MATADI]
"The Anversville" was another agreeable surprise. She is one of three
sister ships in the service of the Compagnie Belge Maritime du Congo.
The other two are "The Albertville" and "The Elizabethville." The
original "Elizabethville" was sunk by a German submarine during the war
off the coast of France. These vessels are big, clean, and comfortable
and the service is excellent.
All vessels to and from Europe stop at Boma, the capital of the Congo,
which is five hours steaming down river from Matadi. We remained here
for a day and a half because the Minister of the Colonies was to go back
on "The Anversville." I was glad of the opportunity for it enabled me to
see this town, which is the mainspring of the colonial administration.
The palace of the Governor-General stands on a commanding hill and is a
pretentious establishment. The original capital of the Congo was Vivi,
established by Stanley at a point not far from Matadi. It was abandoned
some year ago on account of its undesirable location. There is a strong
sentiment that Leopoldville and not Boma should be the capital and it is
not unlikely that this change will be made.
The Minister of the Colonies and Monsieur Henry, the Governor-General,
who also went home on our boat, received a spectacular send-off. A
thousand native troops provided the guard of honour which was drawn up
on the bank of the river. Native bands played, flags waved, and the
populace, which included hundreds of blacks, shouted a noisy farewell.
Slowly and majestically the vessel backed away from the pier and turned
its prow downstream. With mingled feelings of relief and regret I
watched the shores recede as the body of the river widened. Near the
mouth it is twenty miles wide and hundreds of feet deep.
At Banana Point I looked my last on the Congo River. For months I had
followed its winding way through a land that teems with hidden life and
resists the inroads of man. I had been lulled to sleep by its dull roar;
I had observed its varied caprice; I had caught the glamour of its
subtle charm. Something of its vast and mysterious spirit laid hold of
me. Now at parting the mighty stream seemed more than ever to be
invested with a tenacious human quality. Sixty miles out at sea its
sullen brown current still vies with the green and blue of the ocean
swell. It lingers like the spell of all Africa.
The Congo is merely a phase of the larger lure.
INDEX
Albert, King of Belgium, 141, 226, 240
Albert, Lake, 60, 180
Alberta, 208, 209, 211, 212, 214
Albertville, 60
Ants, 155, 156
Armour, J. Ogden, 125
Bailey, Sir Abe, 135
Ball, Sidney H., 244, 245
Baluba, 203
Bangala, The, 194, 195, 200, 203
Barclay, Mrs. Edwin, 265
Barclay, Mr. Edwin, 265, 270
Barnato, Barney, 70-80, 86
Basuto, 92
Bechuanaland, 103, 106-108, 113
Behr, H. C., 86
Beira, 119, 127, 150
Belgian Congo, 59, 81, 107, 124, 125, 130, 139-177, 225, 227-230, 241-284
Benguella, 151
Bia Expedition, 241
Bolobo, 202
Botha, General, 16-17, 19, 22, 23, 24-26, 38, 39, 74, 98
Braham, I. F., 212, 213, 214
Brandsma, Father, 192, 193
British South Africa Company, 108-111, 115, 126-127
Broken Hill Railway, 146
Bukama, 61, 160, 163
Bulawayo, 104-106, 112, 113, 127, 130, 134, 135, 144, 150
Bunge, Edward, 244
Butner, Daniel, 149
Butters, Charles, 86, 88
Cairo, 57
Cameroons, 100, 101
Campbell, J. G., 167-168
"Cape-boy," 93
Cape Colony, 23, 64
"Cape-to-Cairo," 57-101, 108, 146, 150-151
Capetown, 17, 28-30, 57, 68, 74, 76, 104, 105, 114
Carnahan, Thomas, 149
Carrie, Albert, 248-249
Carson, Sir Edward, 27
Casement, Sir Roger, 100, 142
Chaka, 105
Chaplin, Sir Drummond, 109-110
Chilembwe, John, 94
Clement, Victor M., 86, 88
Cleveland, President, 227
Cleveland, Rev. Roy Fields, 277, 278
"Comte de Flandre," 189-192, 197
Congo-Kasai Province, 221, 246, 248
Congo River, The, 59, 140-145, 153, 160-162, 179-284
Coquilhatville, 201-202, 216
Crane, Mr. and Mrs. Charles L., 278-279
Creswell, Col. F. H. P., 29-30
Cullinan, Thomas M., 90
Curtis, J. S., 86, 88
Davis, Charles H., 277, 278
Dean, Captain, 187, 188
DeBeers, 78-80, 129
Delcommune, Alexander, 243-244
Diamonds, 64, 76, 77-90, 94, 134, 135, 146, 152, 244, 265;
Congo Fields, 265-269;
Congo Output, 152
Djoko Punda, 225, 247, 255, 269, 275, 276
Doyle, Donald, 259, 262, 267
Doyle, Mrs. Donald, 264
Dubois, Lieutenant, 187-188
Dunn, Dr. John, 262
Durban 69
Dutoitspan Mine, 81
Elizabethville, 145, 147, 148, 149, 153, 157, 181
Fairbairn, Henry, 277, 278
Forminiere, The, 225-228, 232-234, 237, 256, 257, 261, 277
Franck, Louis, 169-176, 179
Francqui, Emile, 239-243
Fungurume, 157, 160
George, Lloyd, 15, 38, 40-42, 45
German East Africa, 70, 101, 166
German South-West Africa, 25, 70, 73, 81, 99, 101, 152
Germany in Africa, 98-101, 150, 151, 165, 166, 174, 210, 216, 231
Gerome, 157, 181
Gordon, General, 58, 187
Grenfell, George, 198, 201, 203, 255
Grey, George, 147
Groote Schuur, 32-34, 36, 41, 47, 53, 114
Guggenheim, Daniel, 235
Hammond, John Hays, 84, 86, 88, 128-129, 235
Harriman, E. H., 238, 239
Hellman, Fred, 86
Hertzog, General W. B. M., 25-28, 46, 50-51, 53
Hex River, 76
Honnold, W. L., 86
Horner, Preston K., 149, 157
Hottentot, 92, 93
Hoy, Sir William W., 66-67
Huileries du Congo Belge, 189, 208-212, 222, 226, 263
Jadot, Jean, 237-238, 239, 241, 243
Jameson, Raid, 23, 86, 87, 89, 100, 115
Jameson, Sir Starr 80, 89, 106, 111, 117, 136
Janot, N., 245
Jenkins, Hennen, 86, 87
Jennings, Sidney, 86
Johannesburg, 30, 65, 76, 78, 84, 85, 89, 93, 103, 105, 244
Johnston, Sir Harry, 197, 201, 203, 212, 255
Kabalo, 60, 165
Kabambaie, 258, 259, 275, 276
Kaffir, 64, 71, 82, 92, 266
Kahew, Frank, 149
Kambove, 149, 150
Karoo, 77
Kasai River, 95-96, 156, 189, 191, 199, 217, 223, 225, 227, 246, 247,
249, 253-258, 264, 269, 275
Katanga, 145-146, 147, 148, 149, 150-153, 165, 174-175, 181, 194, 226, 241
Kimberley, 64, 76, 77, 90, 94, 134, 135, 146, 154, 244, 265
Kindu, 59, 168-169, 170
Kinshassa, 153, 190, 201, 216, 217, 221-222, 247, 275, 281
Kitchener, Lord, 15, 39, 77
Kito, 180-181
Kongolo, 59, 166, 168, 177
Kruger, Paul, 22, 38, 47, 87-88, 89, 100, 107
Kwamouth, 217, 247
Kwilu River, 47, 209, 226
Labram, George, 82-83
Lane, Capt. E. F. C., 43
Leggett, T. H., 86
Leopold, King, 106, 139, 142, 150, 158, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230-235,
244, 245
Leopoldville, 221, 222
Leverhulme, Lord, 189, 208, 248
Leverville, 209
Lewaniki, 125
Livingstone, Dr., 184, 185, 254
Lobengula, 105, 106, 112, 115, 134
"Louis Cousin," 160-162
Lowa, 170
Lualaba River, 59, 60, 160, 161-164, 168, 170, 177, 190, 191, 197
Luluaburg, 215
Lusanga, 249, 251
Mabonda Mine, 265, 270
"Madeleine," 252-254, 276
Mafeking, 103
Maguire, Rochfort, 107
Mahagi, 59-60, 62
Maize, 124-125
Mashonaland, 106, 111-112
Matabele, 103, 105, 106, 112, 113, 115, 126, 134
Matadi, 279-281, 282
Matopo Hills, 113-114, 115, 135
McMillan, William, 267
McMillan, Mrs. William, 268
Mein, Capt. Thomas, 86, 88
Mein, W. W., 86
Merriman, J. X., 94
Milner, Lord, 118
Mohun, R. D. L., 244, 245, 246
Moody, G. D., 256, 257, 258, 259, 261, 276
Morgan, J. P. 74, 228, 238
Morrison, Rev. W. M., 273
Moul, R. D., 143
Nanda, 254, 255
Natal, 21, 23, 78, 122
Nelson, 181-182, 248, 257, 258, 276, 282, 283
Newport, Glenn H., 271
Nile River, 59, 60, 175
Nyassaland, 94, 142
Oliver, Roland B., 245
Orange Free State, 21, 23, 25, 50, 106, 139
Perkins, H. C., 86
Plumer, Lord, 113
Ponthierville, 59, 152, 170
Port Elizabeth, 72, 77
Portuguese East Africa, 106, 112, 113, 150
Prester, John, 94
Pretoria, 47, 76, 90, 93
Rand, The, 84-85, 86, 87, 89, 152, 249
Reid, A. E. H., 245
Reid, C. A., 245
Rey, General de la, 25, 45
Rhodes, Cecil, 17, 20, 32, 58, 60-61, 77-83, 86, 104-110, 114-121,
125, 129-137, 150, 165, 186, 230
Rhodesia, 18, 33, 59, 94, 103-110, 114-121, 122-131
Roberts, Lord, 16
Robinson, J. B., 85
Robison, J. E., 256, 258
Rondebosch, 32
Roos, Tielman, 53-54
Roosevelt, Theodore, 19
Rudd, C. D., 107
Ryan, Thomas F., 228, 232-235, 244, 275
Sabin, Charles H., 74
Sakania, 144
Sanford, General H. S., 227, 228
Selous, F. C., 111
Seymour, Louis, 86
Shaler, Millard K., 245
Smartt, Sir Thomas, 52
Smith, Hamilton, 86
Smuts, Jan Christian, 15-20, 23, 24-26, 28, 29-56, 98
Snow, Frederick, 149
Société Generale, 234-236, 239
Solvay, Edmond, 244
Soudan Railway, 60
Stanley, Henry M., 159, 166, 170, 177, 183, 184, 185-188, 194, 196,
201, 203, 217, 218-221, 227, 228, 230, 255, 262
Stanley Pool, 218, 222, 279
Stanleyville, 59, 162, 166, 168, 169, 175, 177-180, 183, 185, 189,
190, 196, 200
Steyne, President, 49
Stoddard, Lothrop, 96
Stonelake, Dr., 202
Tambeur, General, 165
Tanganyika Lake, 60, 142, 150, 166, 169
Teneriffe, 69
Thompson, F. R., 107
Thompson, Samuel, 86
Thompson, W. B., 74
Thys, General Albert, 279, 280
Tippo Tib, 166, 184-185
Togoland, 100-101
"Tony", 133
Transvaal, 21, 23, 50, 106
Tshikapa, 247, 256, 259, 262, 263, 264, 265, 267, 275, 282
Uganda, 59
Union of South Africa, 18, 20, 23
Van den Hove, Adrian M., 251-252
Venezilos, 15
Verner, S. P., 244
Victoria Falls, 104, 127, 130-132
Vryburg, 119
Wallace, Major Claude, 212, 213, 214
Wallace, Mrs. Claude, 212
Wangermee, General Emile, 148
Wankie, 128
Ward, Herbert, 184-188, 203
Warriner, Ruel C., 86
Webb, H. H., 86
Webber, George, 86
Wheeler, A. E., 149
Whitney, Harry Payne, 235
Williams, Gardner F., 82, 88
Williams, Robert, 61, 146, 150, 151, 175
Wilson, Woodrow, 37, 40, 42, 43, 50
Wissmann, Herman, 255
Yale, Thomas, 149
Yeatman, Pope, 86
Zambesi River, 18, 109, 131-132
Zambesia, 108
Zimbabwe Ruins, 130
Zulu, 64, 71, 82, 92, 93, 266
*Transcriber's notes:*
Typos replaced:
Pg 26: separate streams → separate streams"
Pg 38: Africa.--the → Africa,--the
Pg 40: betwen → between
Pg 49: man con → man can
Pg 51: betwen → between
Pg 52: Britian → Britain
Pg 56: 'The destiny → "The destiny
Pg 56: Britian → Britain
Pg 57: n the world → in the world
Pg 59: beteween → between
Pg 72: It no → It is no
Pg 73: a quarter or → a quarter of
Pg 73: reoganization → reorganization
Pg 82: speriority → superiority
Pg 89: Eeast → East
Pg 89: stragetic → strategic
Pg 100: auother → another
Pg 101: Belian → Belgian
Pg 103: III → CHAPTER III
Pg 103: 'We've → "We've
Pg 110: irrenconcilable → irreconcilable
Pg 124: considering, Every → considering. Every
Pg 124: stock, The → stock. The
Pg 131: maximun → maximum
Pg 132: marval → marvel
Pg 139: IV → CHAPTER IV
Pg 139: controversay → controversy
Pg 152: developent → development
Pg 163: invarably → invariably
Pg 163: conspicious → conspicuous
Pg 166: rail-dead → rail-head
Pg 169: distaseful → distasteful
Pg 174: Rockerfeller → Rockefeller
Pg 177: V → CHAPTER V
Pg 182: Adthough → Although
Pg 184: invaribly → invariably
Pg 184: cruelity → cruelty
Pg 186: exporations → exploration
Pg 187: capured → captured
Pg 190: removed whole line "from his automobile and the creaky, jolty
train started" from between "that you" and "feel on"
Pg 191: sacrified → sacrificed
Pg 193: Uguanda → Uganda
Pg 195: resplendant → resplendent
Pg 201: high sease → high seas
Pg 210: incased → encased
Pg 214: unforgetable → unforgettable
Pg 219: arival → arrival
Pg 222: Begian → Belgian
Pg 225: VI → CHAPTER VI
Pg 226: Transporte → Transports
Pg 241: Forminere → Forminiere
Pg 243: Banqe → Banque
Pg 249: chololate-hued → chocolate-hued
Pg 255: heirarchy → hierarchy
Pg 255: Wissman → Wissmann
Pg 258: Fir → For
Pg 270: that → than
Pg 283: that → than
Pg 285: 194 → 194,
Pg 286: 85' → 85,
Pg 287: Societe → Société
Pg 288: Wissman → Wissmann
No attempt was made to harmonise inconsistent hyphenation; e.g. both
spellings _bed-room_ and _bedroom_ can be found in this book.
End of Project Gutenberg's An African Adventure, by Isaac F. Marcosson