CONGO CANNIBALS.

Evening Post, Volume L, Issue 125, 23 November 1895, Page 1 (Supplement)

CONGO CANNIBALS.

The state of affairs in the Congo State is, according to recent news, very serious. It would seem that there are about five military expeditions operating in the Congo State. Of these the most important is that formerly commanded by Van Kerckhoven, and now under Lieut. Franqui, of the Belgian Infantry. It was the Franqui Expediton which had a sanguinary engagement — not with the Dervishes, but with the native allies of the Dervishes -and met with a severe defea.t The expedition consisted of 600 rifles, composed of Sierra Leones and Houssas, and detachments of native regular troops. Serving under Lieutenant Franqui were two British officers, Captain Salisbury and Captain Burrows (who had been serving with King Leopold's Commission since July, 1894), Sub • Lieutenants Swinnefurd (a Swede), Nicolot, Devenyns, Gehot, and Frenet. The force was supported by 3000 natives, belonging to a tribe under the command of Zigba, a native chief of an adjacent district on the Uelle. The objects of the expedition were first to punish Bafuka and Renzi, and then to occupy the Upper Nile territory. Having burnt all the villages on the route without opposition, the Congo State outposts were attacked, and this skirmish was the precursor of a serious fight on Feburary 11. At 9 o'clock that morning, the troops, having just passed a wooded ravine and being on the look-out, formed square Justin time to sustain a vigorous charge from Bafuka's people, numbering from 400 to 500 lances. The . enemy emerged at a run from a village some 600 paces from the front of the square. They were in three lines. There was a little brushwood, and through this the natives charged the square, loudly yelling and brandishing their spears and shields. They came down upon the square, and broke through the right and left corners of the front. Sub-Lieutenant Frenet was killed outright, pierced with no fewer than 27 spear wounds. Rushing the line of porters in the middle of the square, both lines of the enemy passed in front of Captain Salisbury's Sierra Leones, and at 9 20— ten minutes after the attack — tuey had passed through the entire square, leaving, at but little cost to themselves, 150 of the expedition hors de combat. Thirty-eight of the Houssas were killed in less than two minutes. After this serious repulse the Belgians retired to Dongus, a fortified zareba, the extreme post held by the State in the direction of the Nile. Immediately after the defeat of the State troops by Bafuka, Ndoruma, a native chief, whose post was about two days' march from the scene of action, massacred Captain Hansons, the Resident attached to the chief, a Belgian sub-officer, and the 60 soldiers forming his escort. About the same time an Englishman named Graham, who had served as a private in the Royal Artillery for 21 years, and who had accompanied Captains Salisbury and Burrows, was returning from Djabbir on his way to England when he was murdered by the men of Unguetra, a minor chief, in the latter's village, about four days' march south of Djabbir. He was speared to death, and then eaten. When the news was received in Djabbir, an expedition, under the command of Captain Vanderminnen, was sent against Unguetra, but the latter had fled to the bush.