DARKEST AFRICA

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 56, 8 March 1915, Page 2

DARKEST AFRICA

Darkest Africa was the subject of a lecture of more than usual interest delivered in the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall on Friday by Mr. J. Alexander Clarke, of the Belgian Congo. The title of the address was " Travelling and Hunting in Dr. Livingstone's Country." The Hon. J. G. W. Aitketi presided over a large audience. In the Course of his remarks, which were illustrated with numerous lantern slides, the lecturer told his listeners of the horrors of the slave trade, which still existed, ih spite of Dr. Livingstone's stirring appeal to the nations 40 years ago to suppress it. Pictures of the bleached bones of slaves who had tried to escape or fallen by the wayside through sheer fatigue were thrown on the screen. The skulls of these unforttmate natives, said the speaker, were fixed to trees to serve as a warning of the fate that awaited slaves who tried to break away from captivity. One of the curses of the country between the Zambesi and the Congo Rivers was the tsetse fly, which made it impossible to use cattle teams. Conse^ quehtly the difficulties of transport were sometimes almost insurmountable. Sleeping sickness devastated the country, and, although much had been done by the British ahd Belgian Government to overcome the dread disease, it still carried off hundreds of the natives. The native carriers were very patient, and although the growth was sometimes 20ft high they generally travelled from ten to fifteen miles a day. The N inhabitants were fond of weird dances, and most of the newfangled dances came from Central Africa. They manufactured an intoxicating brew, but it was very mild. " After drinking for a fortnight they begin to get drunk, remarked the lecturer, amid laughter. Other phases of life in savage Africa were also dealt with by the speaker, who urged -that Christianity was the only salvation for the benighted inhabitants.