THE CONGO.
SOME AITALLING FACTS.
CAPTAIN' M'DONALD'S LECTURE
The Congo as a subject of public'interest now iooms largo before the whole world and an audience at Ih o Hanover Street baptist. Church was last night brought, face lo face with that wonderful river, (he extraordinary dwellers on its banks, (he iniquitous rubber trade, the terrible mutilations, massacres, and oppressions, the tricks of the tracuius, and tho works of the wissiouavK's l'he pctuur wis CajiUm David K. .U Donald, of tho Congo mission boat Living' stone, and his powerful and thrilling address was vividly illustrated with a number ol remarkable lantern slides. " Except for the focus on tho sheet the •.•Imreh was pitch dark, and the audience iollowed the fascinating ruihllivo with fa pi. attention, the tenee listening silence that enveloped llie speaker's words being occasionally broken' by exclamations ol wornlcr, indignation, and horror. MALARIAL MOSQUITOS. Introduced by Die Rev, W. flay, Captain U Donald showed the river mouth, the .haunt of malaria and swarms nt mosquitos where the sirens of tho big Homo boats •sometimes sounded, and fie Htt.le coaches tamo with coffee, salt, and cocoarm* oil. Mosquitos were one of Ihe minor curses of tho country. The white peoplo at first, to avoid them, Iwilt on Hie heights as far nom the river as possible, but found the c hills were more conducive lo ihe fever than the mosquitos; 60 now Europem .esidents dwelt, as close to the water as possible. From -oma, the capital, ihe journey was made to Leopoldville bv rail in open trucks behind a ric'kel ty littlo engine that, blew dust all over the passengers till they -esembled biacks. _ Leopoldville is built at the angle of an immense cataract, and woe betide t.ie steamer whose gear goes wrong. Canlam M'lJonald witnessed a mishap. A barge yi tow struck a rock and was cut aunft, but meanwhile the si earner lost her way, and was swept into' the j-rip of the race Ilead to stream she paddled full speed ahead For t.wo hours, but was giadtiallv sucked further and further down towards the rapids. Lines were flung from shore, and from another steamer out. of the eurlent, and by degrees she was edged in, and escaped destruction by a hair's breadth. • KING LEOPOLD. It is _at this Leopoldville that you first hear of oppression. The people are taxed to tho yergo of starvation and beyond it. So cruel are their burdens that over 5000 fled in one night, leaving the'village standing untenanted. They fled.to th 0 French Congo, and over 30,000 have - from time to tune followed suit. Here . you have to ta3;e. tho steamer —in this case the mission steamer Livingstone. Like most craft, on tho Congo she is a flat-bottomed stern wheeler of shallow draught, with a double tier of deck cabins. The averago pacc of the steamer is one knot and a-half an hour tway from the cataracts, anu it takes three times as long to go up stream as it does to corno down.' Oil board is a hospital, where fever pat.ients are nursed. There are mision stages at long intervals, nearly as far up as Stanley Falls, and before the Great. Bond is reached there e a mission station with a printing press. The natives havo an intense thirst for knowledge, and as nothing is printed but. the Scriptures, the deduction is obvious. One of these mission stations is exactly on the equator. There are no seasons, nothing but a perpetual summer, and tho grass is always green. Even one degree 'lorth or «outli -tiakes a dift'erenco.
___ BASKETS OF HANDS. On entering the J?:g Bend you enter the Congo Balolo Mission field' and the Crown Domain, wh eh is about as big as Germany. It is a vast rubber-bearing forest, veined with tributaries, great and small, flowing north to the Congo, This is the property of Leopold, the King of the Belgians. This _is the theatre of (hi most ghastly atrocities. Rubber is wanted. Rubber must be got at any price, and natives are shot down by hundreds localise they cr their tribe have failed to bring in a sufficient, quantity. Round the State posts the dead were sometimes too numerous to count, much less to bury. The missionaries saw these things, but for long deemed it their duty to preach the Gospel and not to make reports. Lately the massacres and mutilations became to terrible that they were driven to report on them, and then tho, hand of the Belgian King was raised against them, They were discredited, thwarted, and threatened. Finally they were told to go, and the traders did as they lilted. It was in this district that the sentries arrived at intervals with baskets full of right hands, to show that they had not wasted their cartridges. These sentries arc, though sometimes cannibals, less bloodthirsty than their white masters. They do not wish to kill the hundreds they are sent t<j slaughter,: so they often fire at animals in the forest, but when the time approaches for them to render an account of their ghastly stewardship they are afraid. Hands—right hands—must be got, and at once; so a raid js made in any direction.; The luckless villagers are surprised, a few ragged volleys are tired into the midst of them, and the right hands are hacked from the dead, tho wounded, and the unhurt; from men, from women, and from little children. So the baskets go in full to the brim, the cartridges are accounted for, and the white man is pacified. This is the reason why so many of the natives may be seen with their right arms terminating in stumps above tho wrist. A chief, whose tribe had been backward with iis toll of rubber, was seized, and worked to a skeleton with the chain gang. Again his tribe was remiss, and his infuriated captors literally, kicked him to death. S MISSIONARIES.
The lecturer went on to speak of tho mission houses. The two-storey typo had been abandoned, as they became infested with mosquitos, and were damp. Wooden buildings on briclc piers were now the idea, with the floor as high from the ground as possible. The missionaries did (heir own building, carpentering, and blacksmithing; made repairing slips for their steamer, and the " barter" houses. They were taxed outrageously for everything. The State would not help tho missionaries, who were not wanted (hero. Some beautiful pa-lm' avenues were shown on the screen, forming long perspectives of cool green arches beneath a blinding sun. Churches were thatched roofs on four or six uprights, and missionaries went their " rounds" by canoe up the creeks and tributaries. Iron to the natives was as valuable as gold, and< they would steal the grate and firoirons. A phenomenon that puzzled the new arrival was I hat on going out in the morning in grass drcnchcd with dew he got his clothcs covered with what seemed to be red paint. This was a mixture with which the nalives smeared themselves, and which the wet grass retained as I hey passed through it. Another curiosity was the palms, which flourished 500 miles from the coast, which contradicted the accepted belief in the South Seas that cocoanut palms can only grow close to the sea. i
DOG-RATERS. - Oranges, bananas, and mangoes flourished, bill; were usually eaten by goals, the natives not regarding them as articles of diet. The staple food of t hose who were not cannibals was the plantain, which grew out pf the reach of animals. The plantains were ground to pulp in huge bowls made of leaves crushed together, and then baked or fried in palm oil. No article of diet was so acceptable to a native as a dog. lie would do any amount of work for a good fat one. Their own dcg6 had deteriorated till they had lost even their bark, and were more like skeleton pigs than anything else, with little ratty tails curling- over their backs. Appalling- pictures of a warlike bush tribe were thrown with mutilated faces dauted with pipe-clav and pointed teeth. These, however, could neither swim nor paddle, so all the river natives had to <lo in rase of attack was to take to the canoes. They were wonderful canoemakers, but the State officials had stolen nearly all ot them, and the people were 100 disheartened to build more; and, as the art was handed down from father to son, it soon woidd.be forgotten.
lIIPPOS AND CROCODILES. The natives wore mighty hunters, and piles of hippos' skulls were shown by the lantern, also a magnificent specimen shot by a missionary. The lecturer said the Congo tcemoil with them, also with two varieties of crocodile—man-eating anil Hell-eating. The former followed up ranocs, as accidents were frequent. They also waited for Iho women, who came to the bank for water. Besides raising their flesh in ridges by means of lances till their liaclcs and chests rc£«mbled washing-boards, the women had extraordinary methods of doing their hair, which sometimes took thehi days to arrange. The various methods wore depicted on the sheet, to the amazement of all ladies present.''
FEMALE SLAVES "BEAUTIFIED." Husbands insisted on their wives (one chief had COO) having their eyelashes pulled out and their bodies carved, "because it made them more beautiful." They frequently fainted during the operation. These awful facial and bodily disfigurements were rendered permanent by keeping the wounds opon for a period of yeare. In addition to this, the >v,omea had to jssk jbggg hwf?..
collars, which could not be taken olf, and brass leggings. Brass, next to iron, was the most valuable metal, to the wives carried thoir husbands' capital on their jtorsons If n canoe capsized they sank like clones. Leopards, startled by the clank of metal, would awake ,ttiul spring on the bras* bound women and tear them in pieces. With the mcst primitive appliances they were wonderful hrassivorkers,. and turned out shields, symmetrical spears, axes, and implements. Their anvils were stones, their hammers iron pins, their bellows made of leaves, and the fuel charcoal. Woodcarving was a fine art, stools and lonft lounge chairs being curved out from the tree. Weavers were lo be seen plying their trade in the forest with a complicated coutrivance of sticks that, being manipulated, formed tho pattern.
THE GRAVES. The death of a man was made horrible by his wives carrying round the corpse, with its personal effects, and yelling till the echoes ' - aug again. The coffin of a chief was usually a canoe with a top,' and 'ornamented with carvings. It was not unusual to see a horrible heathen orgic proceeding at 011 c end of a village, and an open-air Christian meoiina in progress at the other. Many ..nissionaries in the early days laid down their lives for the Gospel's sake, and here and in the forest silences might be seen the quiet, but eloquent graves. The natives invariably built litile. bouses over their dead, sometimes better than their own dwellings, and in these a chair was placed for the convenience of the spirits of tho departed.
' SLEEPING SICKNESS. Though in Uganda thousands of pounds were being spent to alleviate this dreadful scourge. King Leopold had done nothing to stamp it out. He had tried to
"blind and bhilf" the people of England by offering a cash prize to anyone who discovered a cure. Ho knew very well that there was 110 positive cure, and the people of Congo knew him for a tyrant and a deceiver, who did not care whether the natives lived or died as long as they brought in rubber. Thousand? were dying everywhere, some three years afler contracting the sickness, and some sooner. It commenced to show itself in inflamed eyes and svvollou glands in the neck, ami then more terribly and unmistakably. Three European ladies had keen cured with large closes of arsenic," .which killed the germ; but this'had 110 effect whatever in the caso of natives. 'Die disease was carried from one to another by the tsetse fly. The only way to combat the sickness was, the lecturer thought, by establishing isolation camps in the forests far from the villages. WITCH DOCTORS. It took at least three years to get tho confidence of the natives, and even then they would prefer to consult the witch doctors. These were old. men with faces and chests mutilated abnormally, who possessed great power over the people. They claimed to ho able to east out 13 evil spirits from a man during the day. A native possessed with a demon would arrive, and tho witch doctor would conceal a grasshopper in the palm of his left hand, and with the right make an incision in his patients leg. Then he would gradually call the evil spirit up to the ■ aperture, and at tho critical moment release the grass-/ hoppei, saying, "Look! there it goes," and the man would depart comforted and cured. The charms they sold were a' few, leaves, some , parrot feathers, and some'' nail parings, which tho buyers treasured more than life itf.elf. One of these witch doctors was .a regular attendant at church.
A RECANTATION. One bf the pictures shown was that of the melancholy old chief Loutulu, whose people worshipped him because his beard grew' nearly to the ground. Ho caused his first child to be buried alive, as the people believo that this practice will bring tho father wealth. His tribe grew backward in rubber tribute, and the Belgians sent a marauding band, headed by two whites, into his country. The orders were that the invaders were to be rationed on the bodies of the slain. Hundreds were killed, ajid Lout-ulu 6ent in his report for the King of Belgium with a tally of sticks for each murder—a long stick for each chief, a thin one for a woman, and a little one for a child. For this he was captured and kept in the chain gang till he rceanted. His beard was cut off, and he was 6cnt back, to his tribe a beggar and disgraced. About this time Mr and'Mm Harris, of the Congo Reform Association, were compelled to leave under threats of death by the traders. As for tho natives, some missionaries laboured for 11 years without a convert. They were given over to demon worship and cannibalism. Though wonderful in canoes, tlioy regarded a tail as a large (lag, and had no idea it could propel a boat through Ihe water* A bag of salt was worth 1000 brass rods, which'was the price of a wife, and fathers dressed their daughters up for sale at the age of 13.
AN EXECUTION. Captain M'Donald said human sacrifice was often practised, and a ghastly picture was focussed, showing an \infortuuate tied with vines. Close by stood the executioner with the knife ready for the nameless horrors. Close by were the drums and rattles to drown the shrieks of the victim. The lecturer said that there was a curious rule, which laid d.own that should a visiting chief arrive with his retinue he could •' buy the neck " of the victim. That meant that he could pay a price and take him away as a slave. If the man yyaa ablebodied this was often done. The missionaries had turned this to account, .and impressed' on the people that they wcre v all in the j place of the bound victim before God, arjd that Christ had come as " buyer of the neck." AN INTERVIEW. Interviewed after his lecture, Captain M'Donald said that it was impossible to exaggerate the atrocities perpetrated by the rubber traders. And many of the crimes committed were too appalling to be thought about, jnuch less spoken from a public platform. King Leopold was apparently going' to hand over the country to tho Belgian Government for two millions, but there seemed to be no guarantee that the natives would be benefited by the change. The only hope was the cutting loose of the whole system, and any alteration would,mean a. heavy loss. The people had beefi so maltreated and' impoverished, and tbo country so squeezed and neglected, that nothing could be done in tho Belgian Congo,without a large expenditure of capital. > Captain M'Donald left the Congo last April, after a three years' stiw, during which lie travelled 20,000 miles, ne returns next October. Meanwhile he is lecturing and doing his utmost to raise a little money to better equip the mission steamer Livingstop®-
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Bibliographic details
Otago Daily Times, Issue 14161, 13 March 1908, Page 6
Word Count
2,748THE CONGO. Otago Daily Times, Issue 14161, 13 March 1908, Page 6
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