The Congo and Coasts of Africa

Part 1

THE CONGO AND COASTS OF AFRICA

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS, F.R.G.S.

AUTHOR OF "SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE," "THE SCARLET CAR," "WITH BOTH ARMIES IN SOUTH AFRICA," "FARCES," "THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS"

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR AND OTHERS

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK 1907

CECIL CLARK DAVIS

MY FELLOW VOYAGER ALONG THE COASTS OF AFRICA

CONTENTS

I THE COASTERS 3

II MY BROTHER'S KEEPER 32

III THE CAPITAL OF THE CONGO 55

IV AMERICANS IN THE CONGO 93

V HUNTING THE HIPPO 118

VI OLD CALABAR 142

VII ALONG THE EAST COAST 176

ILLUSTRATIONS

MR. DAVIS AND "WOOD BOYS" OF THE CONGO Frontispiece

MRS. DAVIS IN A BORROWED "HAMMOCK," THE LOCAL MEANS OF TRANSPORT ON THE WEST COAST 10

A WHITE BUILDING, THAT BLAZED LIKE THE BASE OF A WHITEWASHED STOVE AT WHITE HEAT 22

THE "MAMMY CHAIR" IS LIKE THOSE SWINGS YOU SEE IN PUBLIC PLAYGROUNDS 28

A VILLAGE ON THE KASAI RIVER 42

"TENANTS" OF LEOPOLD, WHO CLAIMS THAT THE CONGO BELONGS TO HIM, AND THAT THESE NATIVE PEOPLE ARE THERE ONLY AS HIS TENANTS 52

THE FACILITIES FOR LANDING AT BANANA, THE PORT OF ENTRY TO THE CONGO, ARE LIMITED 56

"PRISONERS" OF THE STATE IN CHAINS AT MATADI 60

BUSH BOYS IN THE PLAZA AT MATADI SEEKING SHADE 70

THE MONUMENT IN STANLEY PARK, ERECTED, NOT TO STANLEY, BUT TO LEOPOLD 82

THE Deliverance. THE RIVER RACED OVER THE DECK TO A DEPTH OF FOUR OR FIVE INCHES. BETWEEN HER CABIN AND THE WOOD-PILE, WERE STORED FIFTY HUMAN BEINGS 86

THE NATIVE WIFE OF A Chef de Poste 90

Part 2

ENGLISH MISSIONARIES, AND SOME OF THEIR CHARGES 98

THE LABORING MAN UPON WHOM THE AMERICAN CONCESSIONAIRES MUST DEPEND 106

MR. DAVIS AND NATIVE "BOY," ON THE KASAI RIVER 128

THE HIPPOPOTAMUS THAT DID NOT KNOW HE WAS DEAD 134

THE JESUIT BROTHERS AT THE WOMBALI MISSION 138

THERE, IN THE SURF, WE FOUND THESE TONS OF MAHOGANY, POUNDING AGAINST EACH OTHER 152

A LOG OF MAHOGANY JAMMED IN THE ANCHOR CHAINS 156

THE PALACE OF THE KING OF THE CAMEROONS 160

THE HOME OF THE THIRTY QUEENS OF KING MANGO BELL 164

THE MOTHER SUPERIOR AND SISTERS OF ST. JOSEPH AND THEIR CONVERTS AT OLD CALABAR 168

THE KROO BOYS SIT, NOT ON THE THWARTS, BUT ON THE GUNWALES, AS A WOMAN RIDES A SIDE SADDLE 172

GOING VISITING IN HER PRIVATE TRAM-CAR AT BEIRA 182

ONE-HALF OF THE STREET CLEANING DEPARTMENT OF MOZAMBIQUE 190

CUSTOM HOUSE, ZANZIBAR 194

CHAIN-GANGS OF PETTY OFFENDERS OUTSIDE OF ZANZIBAR 198

THE IVORY ON THE RIGHT, COVERED ONLY WITH SACKING, IS READY FOR SHIPMENT TO BOSTON, U.S.A. 202

THE LATE SULTAN OF ZANZIBAR IN HIS STATE CARRIAGE 206

H.S.H. HAMUD BIN MUHAMAD BIN SAID, THE LATE SULTAN OF ZANZIBAR 210

A GERMAN "FACTORY" AT TANGA, THE STORE BELOW, THE LIVING APARTMENTS ABOVE 214

SOUDANESE SOLDIERS UNDER A GERMAN OFFICER OUTSIDE OF TANGA 218

THE CONGO AND COASTS OF AFRICA

THE COASTERS

No matter how often one sets out, "for to admire, and for to see, for to behold this world so wide," he never quite gets over being surprised at the erratic manner in which "civilization" distributes itself; at the way it ignores one spot upon the earth's surface, and upon another, several thousand miles away, heaps its blessings and its tyrannies. Having settled in a place one might suppose the "influences of civilization" would first be felt by the people nearest that place. Instead of which, a number of men go forth in a ship and carry civilization as far away from that spot as the winds will bear them.

When a stone falls in a pool each part of each ripple is equally distant from the spot where the stone fell; but if the stone of civilization were to have fallen, for instance, into New Orleans, equally near to that spot we would find the people of New York City and the naked Indians of Yucatan. Civilization does not radiate, or diffuse. It leaps; and as to where it will next strike it is as independent as forked lightning. During hundreds of years it passed over the continent of Africa to settle only at its northern coast line and its most southern cape; and, to-day, it has given Cuba all of its benefits, and has left the equally beautiful island of Hayti, only fourteen hours away, sunk in fetish worship and brutal ignorance.

One of the places it has chosen to ignore is the West Coast of Africa. We are familiar with the Northern Coast and South Africa. We know all about Morocco and the picturesque Raisuli, Lord Cromer, and Shepheard's Hotel. The Kimberley Diamond Mines, the Boer War, Jameson's Raid, and Cecil Rhodes have made us know South Africa, and on the East Coast we supply Durban with buggies and farm wagons, furniture from Grand Rapids, and, although we have nothing against Durban, breakfast food and canned meats. We know Victoria Falls, because they have eclipsed our own Niagara Falls, and Zanzibar, farther up the Coast, is familiar through comic operas and rag-time. Of itself, the Cape to Cairo Railroad would make the East Coast known to us. But the West Coast still means that distant shore from whence the "first families" of Boston, Bristol and New Orleans exported slaves. Now, for our soap and our salad, the West Coast supplies palm oil and kernel oil, and for automobile tires, rubber. But still to it there cling the mystery, the hazard, the cruelty of those earlier times. It is not of palm oil and rubber one thinks when he reads on the ship's itinerary, "the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast, the Bight of Benin, and Old Calabar."

One of the strange leaps made by civilization is from Southampton to Cape Town, and one of its strangest ironies is in its ignoring all the six thousand miles of coast line that lies between. Nowadays, in winter time, the English, flying from the damp cold of London, go to Cape Town as unconcernedly as to the Riviera. They travel in great seagoing hotels, on which they play cricket, and dress for dinner. Of the damp, fever-driven coast line past which, in splendid ease, they are travelling, save for the tall peaks of Teneriffe and Cape Verde, they know nothing.

When last Mrs. Davis and I made that voyage from Southampton, the decks were crowded chiefly with those English whose faces are familiar at the Savoy and the Ritz, and who, within an hour, had settled down to seventeen days of uninterrupted bridge, with, before them, the prospect on landing of the luxury of the Mount Nelson and the hospitalities of Government House. When, the other day, we again left Southampton, that former departure came back in strange contrast. It emphasized that this time we are not accompanying civilization on one of her flying leaps. Instead, now, we are going down to the sea in ships with the vortrekkers of civilization, those who are making the ways straight; who, in a few weeks, will be leaving us to lose themselves in great forests, who clear the paths of noisome jungles where the sun seldom penetrates, who sit in sun-baked "factories," as they call their trading houses, measuring life by steamer days, who preach the Gospel to the cannibals of the Congo, whose voices are the voices of those calling in the wilderness.

As our tender came alongside the Bruxellesville at Southampton, we saw at the winch Kroo boys of the Ivory Coast; leaning over the rail the Soeurs Blanches of the Congo, robed, although the cold was bitter and the decks black with soot-stained snow, all in white; missionaries with long beards, a bishop in a purple biretta, and innumerable Belgian officers shivering in their cloaks and wearing the blue ribbon and silver star that tells of three years of service along the Equator. This time our fellow passengers are no pleasure-seekers, no Cook's tourists sailing south to avoid a rigorous winter. They have squeezed the last minute out of their leave, and they are going back to the station, to the factory, to the mission, to the barracks. They call themselves "Coasters," and they inhabit a world all to themselves. In square miles, it is a very big world, but it is one of those places civilization has skipped.

Part 3

Nearly every one of our passengers from Antwerp or Southampton knows that if he keeps his contract, and does not die, it will be three years before he again sees his home. So our departure was not enlivening, and, in the smoking-room, the exiles prepared us for lonely ports of call, for sickening heat, for swarming multitudes of blacks.

In consequence, when we passed Finisterre, Spain, which from New York seems almost a foreign country, was a near neighbor, a dear friend. And the Island of Teneriffe was an anticlimax. It was as though by a trick of the compass we had been sailing southwest and were entering the friendly harbor of Ponce or Havana.

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