VILLAGE LIFE ON THE UPPER CONGO.

Bruce Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 2180, 4 July 1890, Page 6

VILLAGE LIFE ON THE UPPER CONGO.

Many of the villages on the Upper Congo eousisfc merely oP 50 or 60 loghuts, two-thirds of the population being generally women. In many districts women are considered as currency, their value increasing as they attain a greater degree of corpulency. Each woman has as many metal ornaments as she can w<a- — nome composed of iron, others braes and copper. These metals are the money of the country, so that the more a worn *n can heap upon herself the greater becomes her valuo. Each chief has as many wives as he can afford to buy or marry, which is only another form of purchase. Early in the morning few of these wom*n are to be found in the villagep, as they start off at daybreak to work in their plantations, and do not return until about noon. However a few always have to remain to attend to the necessary domestic items of life, such as cooking and their toilet. These central Africans are very particular in all items in connection v ith their toilet, which consists of plaiting their hair, shaving off the eyebrows, pulling out the eyelashes, cutting their nails right down to the quick, and besmearing their bodies with a mixture of palmoil and camwood.

Fn another part of the village are seen some ot the villagers engaged in making fishing nets and basket-* ork, and being helped by the young boys of the village, who become initiated into these crafts at a very early age. Again, under some shady tree, in another corner of the village, some natives will be engaged in the manufacture of pottery. In this they display a great knowledge of their work, mixing the different clays so as to stand firing. They have no moulds — nothing but the practised eye and hand to assist them, and it is really wonderful to see a lump of clay, in the hands of an African savage, moulded, in the epace of a jfew minute?, into a useful article of pottery, rendered really artistic by its neatness and tasteful design.

A busy nook in a village is always the blacksmith's shop, generally merely a grass roof supported on bare poles. Like the corresponding institution of civilised life, it is the resort of local gossipers. — From "Life Among Congo Savages," by Herbert Ward, in Scribner.