HORRORS OF THE CONGO.

Evening Star, Issue 11452, 21 January 1901, Page 3

HORRORS OF THE CONGO.

A STARTLING INDICTMENT. ,

Mr Ewart S. Grogan and Mr Arthur H. Sharp have now put the account of their tramp 'From the Camp to Cairo' into book form, and a very strildng and remarkable narrative is the result (says the * Daily Mail'). For one thing, they have been enough to secure an introduction from Mr Cecil Rhodes, who, with that great, good-humored outlook of 'his, freely admits that he envies them, for they have done that which has been for centuries.the ambition of almost every explorer—namely, to walk through Africa from south to north. " The amusement of the whole thing, however," he points out, "is that a youth from Cambridge, during his vacation, should have succeeded in doing that which the ponderous explorers of the world have failed to accomplish. There is a distinct humor in the whole thing. It makes me the more certain that we should, complete the telegraph and railway, for surely I am not going to be beaten by the legs of a Cambridge undergraduate." For another, the serious part of their business has been the explanations they have been able to give of the conditions of the Natives, and of the white administrations of the different countries they have journeyed through. They have shown that most grave abuses exist in certain districts, which it will need all the tact and good sense of Mr Chamberlain and the Colonial Office to settle and obliterate. BURN OLD WOMEN ALIVE.

The most serious part of their indictment of the Congo Administration comes, it appears, in the course of a description of a visit from the,chief Katonzi, and they explain how they asked this " dismal old" nigger " why all his people were so frightened and where they had all gone. " Whereupon," writes Sir Grogan, '"he proceeded to recount the same tales of misery and oppression that I had heard the day before, from which I gathered that the Congo Free State official, rejoicing in the name of ' Billyge,' had suddenly'swooped down on the country a year ago, and after shooting down numbers of the Natives had returned west, carrying off fourteen young women, numerous children, and all the cattle and goats, and put in a finishing touch to the proceedings by a grand pyrotechnic display, during which they bound the old "women, threw them into the huts, and then fired the roofs." WHERE TERROR REIGNS. This was confirmed by several absolutely independent witnesses. In fact, Mr. Grogan declares, " the country is now practically a howling wilderness; the scattered inhabitants, terrified even of one another, living almost without cultivation in the marshes, thickets, and reeds, madly fleeing even from their own shadows. Chaos—hopeless, abysmal chaos—reigns from Mweru to the Nile. In the south they heard tales of cruelty of undoubted veracity. On Tanganyika absolute impotence, revolted Asians raging at their own sweet will, while the white men are throwing their ivory and cartridges into the lake and cutting down their bananas for fear the rebels should take them ; on Kiou a hideous wave of cannibalism raging unchecked through the land; while in the north, if any white men wish to keep in peace where chaos now reigns supreme, they are spending- thousands in the making of peace a-chaos of their own." The explorers, in fact, have no hesitation in < ondemning the whole State, as " a vamotre growth, intended to suck the country dry, and to provide a happy hunting ground far n pack of unprincipled outcasts and untniored scoundrels." The key to the difference between this wicked Belgian method and ours, in the opinion of the writers, " lies in the fundamentally distinct objects for which we acquire territory. We acquire territorr for generations yet unborn, trusting thereby to find an outlet for surplus population in the congested days to come. It is to the future benefit of rthe race that we look. We expect no immediate return. But with the Belgians it is quite different. They expect immediate returns.. They say this country is no good. We can get no ivory or rubber, why do we stay here ? ' GHASTLY DISCOVERIES.

The explorers also, it seams, had a very awkward brush with the Beteka, a tribe of cannibals from the Congo that, should have been put down with 'a firm hand long ago. Afterwards they visited the huts, from which they had seen these people come, and terrible was the scene they wituessed. >*A cloud of vultures hovering over the spot gave me (observes Mr Grcgan)) an inkling of what I was a.boub to see; but the realisation defies description. It haunts me in my dreams, at dinner it sits on my leg of mutton, it bubbles in my soup. In fact, Wu Tonga (a native servant) would nob cat the potatoes that grew in the same country, and went without food for forty-eight hours rather than do so. Ask your African friends what that means, for buck niggers have not delicate stomachs. Loathsome, revolting, a hideous nightmare of horrors; and yet I must tell briefly what I saw of half-consumed human remains for the edification of any disciple of the ;poor-dear-black-man, down-with-the-Maxim, Africa-for-the-African creed." SKELETONS EVERYWHERE. " Every village," he proceeds, " had been burnt to the ground, and as I fled from the country I saw skeletons, skeletons everywhere ; in such postures—what tales of horror they told! Let this suffice. Worse than all this I saw, and that I have not exaggerated one jot or tittle may God bear me witness. I would nob have entered into these revolting details but that I think it advisable that those who have nob a chance of seeing it themselves should know what is going on every day in this country. A beautiful yellow covers this spot "on the map, with a fringe of red spots with flags attached, denoting, as the map informs you, stations of tie Congo Free State. . And" yet a peaceful agricultural people, can be subjected to horrors like this for months without anyone knowing. Why? Because the whole system is bunkum—the so-called partition of Africa." WHAT IS THE REPLY? Englishmen the world over will now wait with painful intensity for the reply which the officials concerned are bound to make to such precise and solemn charges as these. Meantime, it is good to note that' From the Cape to Cairo' is a book thab deserves the heartiest reception from all who like brightly and vivaciously written and magnificently illustrated accounts of travel and adventure. The authors have seen much that is new and strange in these little-known regions of Central Africa, and they record it with admirable judgment and effect.