THE ROMANCE OF CONGOLAND.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLII, Issue 218, 14 September 1908, Page 3

THE ROMANCE OF CONGOLAND.

(W. Lawler Wilson.)

George Grenfell, Baptist missionary and explorer, the Livingstone of the Congo region, died at Bgoko two, years ago—on July 1, IUUb. xne leading explorer of the Congo basin after "Stanley, he had spent nearly " thirty years, teaching the natives, extending the Baptist mission, and expCing^the Dark Continent. He was devoted to Africa and happy id his work, but the clouds which began to settle over the Congo State in the last decade of his mission saddened j and distressed him. Once the ardent defender of the Congo State .policy, he slowly and unwillingly losb his faith, in King Leopold. . . ; "He did not know in which direction to turn for the putting straight of this Congo region. ' "These disappointments and rebuffs, as well as the fatigues incidental to constant steamer journeys up and down the Congo connected with the mission work, prematurely aged him. Grenf ell's grave at Basoko is marked by a heavy slab of stone and a cross': but Sir Harry Johnston has erected a better monument to his memory in this book, "George Grenfell and the Congo. J> The two volumes—based on the missionary-ex-plorer's notebooks, but comprising much original matter, supplied by the Rev: Lawson Forfeitt, the Baptist missionary Society, Mr Emil Torday, and Sir Harry Johnston himself— contain a mass of information and pictures relating to all that is interesting in the Congo region. The romance of the Congo is primarily a drama in human nature. It is the story ■ of.two; races—the white and the black—separated by centuries of independent .development, and thrown suddenly into contact by the strange destiny which directs the world and decides the fate of nations. ■"At. Iyanja Bentley was asked A-— "Why do you spirits always trouble us? "You are not good. ■ Our people die, so do our goats and fowls; our farms do not produce what they should, sickness and trouble come, and you are the cause. ... Why do you not let us alone?' " The plaint has a mournful ring, to which the white man is nob insen-, sible. But Sir Harry Johnston, touching for once a depthooff f philosophy which his optimistic and restless temperament rarely allows him to reach, gives the true answer—the only answer—to the black man's remon"This last phrase was used, even j as early as 1883, to the author when visiting similar regions on the Upper Congo. Let us alone. Our customs may be bad in your eyes, but let us alone. Stop in your country, as we stop in ours.' They had not grasped one underlying principle of the martyrdom of man—that our muchsuffering genus never has been let alone since it diverged from the anthropoid ape. The negro and the i Australian may have escaped the i trials of an Ice Age, only now to be plagued instead by their Caucasian or Mongolian brothers, who will not— cannot—let them alone." Even here, in the heart of darkest Africa, where segregated tribes without a history grew up in uritravelled spots, with mysterious customs which they had inherited as the ants arid the bees inherit the lore of t!heir species—even here they were not "let alone." Grenf ell ' tells of •flieir troubles before the white man came to rule over them:— "I have been in the midst of an Arab raid in the centre of the continent, and within twenty-four hours counted twenty-seven burning or sinoking villages, and had myself to face the levelled guns of the raiders. "I have seen the cruel bondage in which whole communities have been held by their superstitious fears. And I have all unavailingly stood by open graves and tried to prevent the liv- ' Ing being buried with the dead, and altogether have seen more of the dark «ide of human nature than I care to

think about,' and. much less to write about. I claim to know better than a great many what is involved, by 'native rule.' " At first the rule of the white man

in the Congo State was beneficent. But the development of the rubber -trade, which increased with leaps and tounds between 1894 and 1904. brought with it an era of cruelty and avarice. Grenfell writes:—

"Madness is the only hypothesis for explaining the insensate cruelty and bestiality which figure so prominently in the charges made, and, because of the madness it has developed, the present system stands condemned. The same system would have wrecked a British or a French or a German colony before this." Apart from the history of the Congo region's development during Grenfell's thirty-years' mission, these two volumes contain a mass of fascinating and valuable matter on the anthro-

pology and zoology of the basin. Nothing is more interesting than the.account of the native secret societies, such as. the Ndembo and Nkimba.

"A young person of either sex who is to be • initiated into the Ndenlbo guild applies first-of all to theNganga (medicine-man or wizard).of the community. Th» would-be initiate at a sign from thß medicine-man feigns death or a swoon in scmo public place.' A funeral cloth is laid ever the novice, who is borne away to a stockaded settlement in the bush called vela. . It is usually pretended then that the young person is dead. When one case of this fictitious demise occurs it is usually followed by a number of others, till it may 'develop into a regular wave of hysteria." When the. youths have been conveyed to the vela it is given out that their bodies are decomposing, until they are reduced to a single bone, which the medicine-man keeps. "After a period, which may vary from three months to three years, the medicine-man pretends to bring about their resurrection by building up their bodies anew on the single bone that he has kept."' . . When the initiates return to their homes they give out that they have come from a spirit world, and pretend not to know their own mothers or how to eat. In the vela they are taugh; a "mystic language" or kind of gibberish which seems to be distinctly related to London back-slang.