CHILDREN OF THE CONGO.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVIII, Issue XII, 20 March 1897, Page 367

CHILDREN OF THE CONGO.

Professor Drummond, after his visit to Africa, said he would like to get inside an African for an afternoon, and see how he looked at different things. Wouldn’t we like to know (says Harper’s Hound Table) just how these boys and girls feel, and what they think, when they are suddenly landed, fresh f-om the depths of a savage land, in the streets of Paris, Brussels or Berlin, and see more things in a day they never heard of than we do in a year? They learn many things, as a baby does, by stern experience. When Von Francois brought an eight-year-old boy from inner Africa to the sea. the youngster chased along the beach in high glee, and before anyone could stop him, tried to refresh himself with a big swallow of ocean water. This same boy, Pitti, thought the snow he saw falling in Berlin was a swarm of butterflies. The first horse he saw terrified him, and the Berlin newspapers told of his unbounded astonishment at the strange dishes and viands on his master’s table. What a marvellous change in the condition of these children. Many of them were slaves, and some of them had been brutally treated and even wounded by cruel slave dealers. To-day they have good homes, and the world is doing all it can to make them intelligent and honourable men and women. There are ‘ street arabs,’ or homeless boys, in the Congo villages, just as there are in our own cities. They live on what they pick up, ami it sharpens their wits to have to hustle for a living. It would take a smart boy to beat some of these Congo youngsters in a trade. Even a five-year-old will sometimes amass a little capital. Somehow he will get hold of a string of beads. He may trade it for a small chicken, which thrives under his nurturing care, and in a few months he can sell the fowl for four strings of beads, quadrupling his capital. Pretty soon he is able to buy a pig, which follows him like a dog, and sleeps in his hut ; and when piggy grows up his owner gets a good price for him in the market.