An African Adventure Part 20

V

Tshikapa, which means "belt," is a Little America in every sense. It commands the junction of the Tshikapa and Kasai rivers. There are dozens of substantial brick dwellings, offices, warehouses, machine-shops and a hospital. For a hundred miles to the Angola border and far beyond, the Yankee has cut motor roads and set up civilization generally. You see American thoroughness on all sides, even in the immense native villages where the mine employees live. Instead of having compounds the company encourages the blacks to establish their own settlements and live their own lives. It makes them more contented and therefore more efficient, and it establishes a colony of permanent workers. When the native is confined to a compound he gets restless and wants to go back home. The Americans are helping to solve the Congo labour problem.

At Tshikapa you hear good old United States spoken with every dialectic flavour from New England hardness to Texas drawl. In charge of all the operations in the field was Doyle, a clear-cut, upstanding American engineer who had served his apprenticeship in the Angola jungles, where he was a member of one of the first American prospecting parties. With his wife he lived in a large brick bungalow and I was their guest in it during my entire stay in the diamond fields. Mrs. Doyle embodied the same courage that animated Mrs. Wallace. Too much cannot be said of the faith and fort.i.tude of these women who share their husband's fortunes out at the frontiers of civilization.

At Tshikapa there were other white women, including Mrs. Dunn, who had recently converted her hospitable home into a small maternity hospital.

Only a few weeks before my arrival Mrs. Edwin Barclay, wife of the manager of the Mabonda Mine, had given birth to a girl baby under its roof, and I was taken over at once to see the latest addition to the American colony.

On the day of my arrival the natives employed at this mine had sent Mrs.

Barclay a gift of fifty newly-laid eggs as a present for the baby.

Accompanying it was a rude note scrawled by one of the foremen who had attended a Presbyterian mission school. The birth of a white baby is always a great event in the Congo. When Mrs. Barclay returned to her home a grand celebration was held and the natives feasted and danced in honour of the infant.

There is a delightful social life at Tshikapa. Most of the mines, which are mainly in charge of American engineers, are within a day's travelling distance in a teapoy and much nearer by automobile. Some of the managers have their families with them, and they foregather at the main post every Sunday. On Thanksgiving, the Fourth of July, and Christmas there is always a big rally which includes a dance and vaudeville show in the men's mess hall. The Stars and Stripes are unfurled to the African breeze and the old days in the States recalled.

It is real community life on the fringe of the jungle.

I was struck with the big difference between the Congo diamond fields and those at Kimberley. In South Africa the mines are gaping gashes in the earth thousands of feet wide and thousands deep. They are all "pipes" which are formed by volcanic eruption. These pipes are the real source of the diamonds. The precious blue ground which contains the stones is spread out on immense "floors" to decompose under sun and rain. Afterwards it is broken in crushers and goes through a series of mechanical transformations. The diamonds are separated from the concentrates on a pulsating table covered with vaseline. The gems cling to the oleaginous substance. It is an elaborate process.

The Congo mines are alluvial and every creek and river bed is therefore a potential diamond mine. The only labour necessary is to remove the upper layer of earth,--the "overburden" as it is termed--dig up the gravel, shake it out, and you have the concentrate from which a naked savage can pick the precious stones. They are precisely like the mines of German South-West Africa. So far no "pipes" have been discovered in the Kasai basin. Many indications have been found, and it is inevitable that they will be located in time. The diamond-bearing earth sometimes travels very far from its base, and the American engineers in the Congo with whom I talked are convinced that these volcanic formations which usually produce large stones, lie far up in the Kasai hills. The diamond-bearing area of the Belgian Congo and Angola covers nearly eight thousand square miles and only five per cent has been prospected. There is not the slightest doubt that one of the greatest diamond fields ever known is in the making here.

Now for a real human interest detail. At Kimberley the Zulus and Kaffirs know the value of the diamond and there was formerly considerable filching. All the workers are segregated in barbed wire compounds and kept under constant surveillance. At the end of their period of service they remain in custody for two weeks in order to make certain that they have not swallowed any stones.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRAVEL CARRIERS AT A CONGO MINE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: CONGO NATIVES PICKING OUT DIAMONDS]

The Congo natives do not know what a diamond really is. The majority believe that it is simply a piece of gla.s.s employed in the making of bottles, and there are a good many bottles of various kinds in the Colony. Hence no watch is kept on the hundreds of Balubas who are mainly employed in the task of picking out the glittering jewels. During the past five years, when the product in the Congo fields has grown steadily, not a single karat has been stolen. The same situation obtains in the Angola fields.

In company with Doyle I visited the eight princ.i.p.al mines in the Congo field and saw the process of mining in all its stages of advancement. At the Kisele development, which is almost within sight of Tshikapa, the small "jigs" in which the gravel is shaken, are operated by hand. This is the most primitive method. At Mabonda the concentrate pans are mounted on high platforms. Here the turning is also by hand but on a larger scale. The Ramona mine has steam-driven pans, while at Tshisundu, which is in charge of William McMillan, I witnessed the last word in alluvial diamond mining. At this place Forminiere has erected an imposing power plant whose tall smokestack dominates the surrounding forest. You get a suggestion of Kimberley for the excavation is immense, and there is the hum and movement of a pretentious industrial enterprise. Under the direction of William McMillan a research department has been established which is expected to influence and possibly change alluvial operations.

Our luncheon at Tshisundu was attended by Mrs. McMillan, another heroine of that rugged land. Alongside sat her son, born in 1918 at one of the mines in the field and who was as l.u.s.ty and animated a youngster as I have seen. His every movement was followed by the eagle eye of his native nurse who was about twelve years old. These native attendants regard it as a special privilege to act as custodians of a white child and invariably a close intimacy is established between them. They really become playmates.

It is difficult to imagine that these Congo diamond mines were mere patches of jungle a few years ago. The task of exploitation has been an immense one. Before the simplest mine can be operated the dense forest must be cleared and the river beds drained. Every day the mine manager is confronted with some problem which tests his ingenuity and resource.

Only the Anglo-Saxon could hold his own amid these trying circ.u.mstances.

No less difficult were the natives themselves. Before the advent of the American engineers, industry was unknown in the Upper Kasai. The only organized activity was the harvesting of rubber and that was rather a haphazard performance. With the opening of the mines thousands of untrained blacks had to be drawn into organized service. They had never even seen the implements of labour employed by the whites. When they were given wheel-barrows and told to fill and transport the earth, they placed the barrows on their heads and carried them to the designated place. They repeated the same act with shovels.

The Yankees have thoroughly impressed the value and the n.o.bility of labour. I asked one of the employes at a diamond mine what he thought of the Americans. His reply was, "Americans and work were born on the same day."

The labour of opening up the virgin land was only one phase. Every piece of machinery and every tin of food had to be transported thousands of miles and this condition still obtains. The motor road from Djoko Punda to Kabambaie was hacked by American engineers through the jungle. It is comparatively easy to get supplies to Djoko Punda although everything must be shifted from railway to boat several times. Between Djoko Punda and Tshikapa the material is hauled in motor trucks and ox-drawn wagons or conveyed on the heads of porters to Kabambaie. Some of it is transshipped to whale-boats and paddled up to Tshikapa, and the remainder continues in the wagons overland. During 1920 seven hundred and fifty tons of freight were hauled from Djoko Punda in this laborious way.

At the time of my visit there were twelve going mines in the Congo field, and three new ones were in various stages of advancement. The Forminiere engineers also operate the diamond concessions of the Kasai Company and the Bas Congo Katanga Railway which will run from the Katanga to Kinsha.s.sa.

More than twelve thousand natives are employed throughout the Congo area alone and nowhere have I seen a more contented lot of blacks. The Forminiere obtains this good-will by wisely keeping the price of trade goods such as salt and calico at the pre-war rate. It is an admirable investment. This merchandise is practically the legal tender of the jungle. With a cup of salt a black man can start an endless chain of trading that will net him a considerable a.s.sortment of articles in time.

The princ.i.p.al natives in the Upper Kasai are the Balubas, who bear the same relation to this area as the Bangalas do to the Upper Congo. The men are big, strong, and fairly intelligent. The princ.i.p.al tribal mark is the absence of the two upper central incisor teeth. These are usually knocked out in early boyhood. No Baluba can marry until he can show this gaping s.p.a.ce in his mouth. Although the natives abuse their teeth by removing them or filing them down to points, they take excellent care of the remaining ivories. Many polish the teeth with a stick and wash their mouths several times a day. The same cannot be said of many civilized persons.

I observed that the families in the Upper Kasai were much more numerous than elsewhere in the Congo. A Bangala or Batetela woman usually has one child and then goes out of the baby business. In the region dominated by the Forminiere it is no infrequent thing to see three or four children in a household. A woman who bears twins is not only hailed as a real benefactress but the village looks upon the occasion as a good omen.

This is in direct contrast with the state of mind in East Africa, for example, where one twin is invariably killed.

I encountered an interesting situation concerning twins when I visited the Mabonda Mine. This is one of the largest in the Congo field.

Barclay, the big-boned American manager, formerly conducted engineering operations in the southern part of America. He therefore knows the Negro psychology and the result is that he conducts a sort of amiable and paternalistic little kingdom all his own. The natives all come to him with their troubles, and he is their friend, philosopher and guide.

After lunch one day he asked me if I would like to talk to a native who had a story. When I expressed a.s.sent he took me out to a shed nearby and there I saw a husky Baluba who was labouring under some excitement. The reason was droll. Four days before, his wife had given birth to twins and there was great excitement in the village. The natives, however, refused to have anything to do with him because, to use their phrase, "he was too strong." His wife did not come under this ban and was the center of jubilation and gesticulation. The poor husband was a sort of heroic outcast and had to come to Barclay to get some food and a drink of palm wine to revive his drooping spirits.

The output in the Congo diamond area has grown from a few thousand karats to hundreds of thousands of karats a year. The stones are small but clear and brilliant. This yield is an unsatisfactory evidence of the richness of the domain. The ore reserves are more than ten per cent of the yearly output and the surface of the concession has scarcely been scratched. Experienced diamond men say that a diamond in the ground is worth two in the market. It is this element of the unknown that gives the Congo field one of its princ.i.p.al potentialities.

The Congo diamond fields are merely a part of the Forminiere treasure-trove. Over in Angola the concession is eight times larger in area, the stones are bigger, and with adequate exploitation should surpa.s.s the parent production in a few years. Six mines are already in operation and three more have been staked out. The Angola mines are alluvial and are operated precisely like those in Belgian territory. The managing engineer is Glenn H. Newport, who was with Decker in the fatal encounter with Batchoks. The princ.i.p.al post of this area is Dundu, which is about forty miles from the Congo border.

As I looked at these mines with their thousands of grinning natives and heard the rattle of gravel in the "jigs" my mind went back to Kimberley and the immense part that its glittering wealth played in determining the economic fate of South Africa. Long before the gold "rush" opened up in the Rand, the diamond mines had given the southern section of the continent a rebirth of prosperity. Will the Congo mines perform the same service for the Congo? In any event they will be a determining factor in the future world diamond output.

No record of America in the Congo would be complete without a reference to the high part that our missionaries have played in the spiritualization of the land. The stronghold of our religious influence is also the Upper Kasai Basin. In 1890 two devoted men, Samuel N.

Lapsley, a white clergyman, and William H. Sheppard, a Negro from Alabama, established the American Presbyterian Congo Mission at Luebo which is about one hundred miles from Tshikapa straight across country.

The valley of the Sankuru and Kasai Rivers is one of the most densely populated of all the Belgian Congo. It is inhabited by five powerful tribes--the Baluba, the Bena Lulua, the Bakuba, the Bakete and the Zappozaps, and their united population is one-fifth of that of the whole Colony. Hence it was a fruitful field for labour but a hard one. From an humble beginning the work has grown until there are now seven important stations with scores of white workers, hundreds of native evangelists, one of the best equipped hospitals in Africa, and a manual training school that is teaching the youth of the land how to become prosperous and constructive citizens. Under its inspiration the population of Luebo has grown from two thousand in 1890 to eighteen thousand in 1920.

The two fundamental principles underlying this splendid undertaking have been well summed up as follows: "First, the attainment of a Church supported by the natives through the thrift and industry of their own hands. The time is past when we may merely teach the native to become a Christian and then leave him in his poverty and squalor where he can be of little or no use to the Church. Second, the preparation of the native to take the largest and most influential position possible in the development of the Colony. Practically the only thing open to the Congolese is along the mechanical and manual lines."

[Ill.u.s.tration: WASHING OUT GRAVEL]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DONALD DOYLE (LEFT) AND MR. MARCOSSON]

One of the n.o.blest actors in this American missionary drama was the late Rev. W. M. Morrison, who went out to the Congo in 1896. Realizing that the most urgent need was a native dictionary, he reduced the Baluba-Lulua language to writing. In 1906 he published a Dictionary and Grammar which included the Parables of Christ, the Miracles, the Epistles to the Romans in paraphrase. He also prepared a Catechism based on the Shorter and Child's Catechisms. This gave the workers in the field a definite instrument to employ, and it has been a beneficent influence in shaping the lives and morals of the natives.

One phase of the labours of the American Presbyterian Congo Mission discloses the bondage of the Congo native to the Witch Doctor. The moment he feels sick he rushes to the sorcerer, usually a bedaubed barbarian who practices weird and mysterious rites, and who generally succeeds in killing off his patient. More than ninety per cent of the pagan population of Africa not only acknowledges but fears the powers of the Witch Doctor. Only two-fifths of one per cent are under Christian medical treatment. The Presbyterian Missionaries, therefore, from the very outset have sought to bring the native into the ken of the white physician. It is a slow process. One almost unsurmountable obstacle lies in the uncanny grip that the "medicine man" wields in all the tribes.

It is largely due to the missionaries that the practice of handshaking has been introduced in the Congo. Formerly the custom was to clap hands when exchanging greetings. The blacks saw the Anglo-Saxons grasp hands when they met and being apt imitators in many things, they started to do likewise. One of the first things that impressed me in Africa was the extraordinary amount of handshaking that went on when the people met each other even after a separation of only half an hour.

VI

I had originally planned to leave Africa at St. Paul de Loanda in Portuguese West Africa, where Thomas F. Ryan and his Belgian a.s.sociates have acquired the new oil wells and set up still another important outpost of our overseas financial venturing. But so much time had been consumed in reaching Tshikapa that I determined to return to Kinsha.s.sa, go on to Matadi, and catch the boat for Europe at the end of August.

There were two ways of getting back to Kabambaie. One was to go in an automobile through the jungle, and the other by boat down the Kasai.

Between Kabambaie and Djoko Punda there is practically no navigation on account of the succession of dangerous rapids. Since my faith in the jitney was still impaired I chose the river route and it gave me the most stirring of all my African experiences. The two motor boats at Tshikapa were out of commission so I started at daybreak in a whale-boat manned by forty naked native paddlers.

The fog still hung over the countryside and the scene as we got under way was like a Rackham drawing of goblins and ghosts. I sat forward in the boat with the ranks of singing, paddling blacks behind me. From the moment we started and until I landed, the boys kept up an incessant chanting. One of their number sat forward and pounded the iron gunwale with a heavy stick. When he stopped pounding the paddlers ceased their efforts. The only way to make the Congo native work is to provide him with noise.

All day we travelled down the river through schools of hippopotami, some of them near enough for me to throw a stone into the cavernous mouths.

The boat capita told me that he would get to Kabambaie by sundown. Like the average New York restaurant waiter, he merely said what he thought his listener wanted to hear. I fervently hoped he was right because we not only had a series of rapids to shoot up-river, but at Kabambaie is a seething whirlpool that has engulfed hundreds of natives and their boats. At sunset we had only pa.s.sed through the first of the troubled zones. Nightfall without a moon found me still moving, and with the swirling eddy far ahead.

I had many close calls during the war. They ranged from the first-line trenches of France, Belgium, and Italy to the mine fields of the North Sea while a winter gale blew. I can frankly say that I never felt such apprehension as on the face of those surging waters, with black night and the impenetrable jungle about me. The weird singing of the paddlers only heightened the suspense. I thought that every tight place would be my last. Finally at eight o'clock, and after it seemed that I had spent years on the trip, we b.u.mped up against the sh.o.r.e of Kabambaie, within a hundred feet of the fatal spot.

The faithful Moody, who preceded me, had revived life in the jonah jitney and at dawn the next day we started at full speed and reached Djoko Punda by noon. The "Madeleine" was waiting for me with steam up, for I sent a runner ahead. I had ordered Nelson back from Kabambaie because plenty of servants were available there. He spent his week of idleness at Djoko Punda in exploring every food known to the country. At one o'clock I was off on the first real stage of my homeward journey.

The swift current made the downward trip much faster than the upward and I was not sorry.

As we neared Basongo the captain came to me and said, "I see two Americans standing on the bank. Shall I take them aboard?"