We can now get at the beginnings of the Forminiere. Most large corporations radiate from a lawyer's office. With the Forminiere it was otherwise. The center of inspiration was the stone palace at Brussels where King Leopold II, King of the Belgians, held forth. The year 1906 was not a particularly happy one for him. The atrocity campaign was at its height abroad and the Socialists were pounding him at home. Despite the storm of controversy that raged about him one clear idea shone amid the encircling gloom. That idea was to bulwark the Congo Free State, of which he was also sovereign, before it was ceded to Belgium.
Between 1879 and 1890 Leopold personally supported the cost of creating and maintaining the Free State. It represented an outlay of more than $2,500,000. Afterwards he had adequate return in the revenues from rubber and ivory. But Leopold was a royal spender in the fullest sense. He had a variety of fads that ranged from youthful and beguiling femininity to the building of palaces and the beautifying of his own country. He lavished millions on making Brussels a sumptuous capital and Ostend an elaborate seaside resort. With his private life we are not concerned. Leopold the pleasure-seeker was one person; Leopold the business man was another, and as such he was unique among the rulers of Europe.
Leopold contradicted every known tradition of royalty. The king business is usually the business of spending unearned money. Your royal spendthrift is a much more familiar figure than the royal miser. Moreover, nobody ever associates productive power with a king save in the big family line. His task is inherited and with it a bank account sufficient to meet all needs. This immunity from economic necessity is a large price to pay for lack of liberty in speech and action. The principal job of most kings, as we all know, is to be a noble and acquiescent figure-head, to pin decorations on worthy persons, and to open public exhibitions.
Leopold did all of these things but they were incidental to his larger task. He was an insurgent from childhood. He violated all the rules of the royal game not only by having a vision and a mind all his own but in possessing a keen commercial instinct. Geography was his hobby at school. Like Rhodes, he was forever looking at maps. When he became king he saw that the hope of Belgium economically lay in colonization. In 1860 he made a journey to the Far East, whence he returned deeply impressed with trade opportunities in China. Afterwards he was the prime mover in the construction of the Pekin-Hankow Railway. I do not think most persons know that Leopold at one time tried to establish a Belgian colony in Ethiopia. Another act in his life that has escaped the casual biographer was his effort to purchase the Philippines from Spain. Now you can see why he seized upon the Congo as a colonizing possibility the moment he read Henry M. Stanley's first article about it in the London Telegraph.
There was a vital reason why Belgium should have a big and prosperous colony. Her extraordinary internal development demanded an outlet abroad. The doughty little country so aptly called "The Cockpit of Europe," and which bore the brunt of the first German advance in the Great War, is the most densely populated in the world. It has two hundred and forty-seven inhabitants for each square kilometer. England only counts one hundred and forty-six, Germany one hundred and twenty-five, France seventy-two, and the United States thirteen. The Belgians had to have economic elbow room and Leopold was determined that they should have it.
His creation of the Congo Free State was just one evidence of his shrewdness and diplomacy. Half a dozen of the great powers had their eye on this untouched garden spot in Central Africa and would have risked millions of dollars and thousands of men to grab it. Leopold, through a series of International Associations, engineered the famous Berlin Congress of 1884 and with Bismarck's help put the Free State on the map, with himself as steward. It was only a year ago in Germany that a former high-placed German statesman admitted to me that one of the few fundamental mistakes that the Iron Chancellor ever made was to permit Leopold to snatch the Congo from under the very eyes and hands of Germany. I quote this episode to show that when it came to business Leopold made every king in Europe look like an office boy. Even so masterful a manipulator of men as Cecil Rhodes failed with him. Rhodes sought his aid in his trans-African telegraph scheme but Leopold was too shrewd for him. After his first audience with the Belgian king Rhodes said to Robert Williams, "I thought I was clever but I was no match for him."
The only other modern king interested in business was the former Kaiser, Mr. Wilhelm Hohenzollern. Although he has no business sense in the way that Leopold had it, he always had a keen appreciation of big business as an imperial prop. Like Leopold, he had a congested country and realized that permanent expansion lay in colonization. The commercial magnates of Germany used him for their own ends but their teamwork advanced the whole empire. Wilhelm was a silent partner in the potash, shipping, and electric-machinery trusts. He earned whatever he received because he was in every sense an exalted press-agent,—a sort of glorified publicity promoter. His strong point was to go about proclaiming the merits of German wares and he always made it a point to scatter samples. On a visit to Italy he left behind a considerable quantity of soap. There was a great rush to get these royal left-overs. Two weeks later a small army of German soap salesmen descended upon the country selling this identical product.
Whatever may be said of Leopold, one thing is certain. He was not small. Wilhelm used the brains of other men; Leopold employed his own, and every capitalist who went up against him paid tribute to this asset.
We can now go back to 1906, the year that was to mark the advent of America into the Congo. Leopold knew that the days of the Congo as a Free State were numbered. His personally-conducted stewardship of the Colony was being assailed by the Socialists on one hand and the atrocity proclaimers on the other. Leopold was undoubtedly sincere in his desire to economically safeguard the African possession before it passed out of his control. In any event, during the summer of that year he sent a message to Ryan asking him to confer with him at Brussels. The summons came out of a clear sky and at first the American financier paid no attention to it. He was then on a holiday in Switzerland. When a second invitation came from the king, he accepted, and in September there began a series of meetings between the two men which resulted in the organization of the Forminiere and with it the dawn of a real international epoch in American enterprise.
In the light of our immense riches the timidity of American capital in actual constructive enterprise overseas is astonishing. Scrutinize the world business map and you see how shy it has been. We own rubber plantations in Sumatra, copper mines in Chile, gold interests in Ecuador, and have dabbled in Russian and Siberian mining. These undertakings are slight, however, compared with the scope of the world field and our own wealth. Mexico, where we have extensive smelting, oil, rubber, mining and agricultural investments, is so close at hand that it scarcely seems like a foreign country. Strangely enough our capital there has suffered more than in any other part of the globe. The spectacle of American pioneering in the Congo therefore takes on a peculiar significance.
There are two reasons why our capital has not wandered far afield. One is that we have a great country with enormous resources and consequently almost unlimited opportunities for the employment of cash at home. The other lies in the fact that American capital abroad is not afforded the same protection granted the money of other countries. Take British capital. It is probably the most courageous of all. The sun never sets on it. England is a small country and her money, to spread its wings, must go elsewhere. Moreover, Britain zealously safeguards her Nationals and their investments, and we, I regret to say, have not always done likewise. The moment an Englishman or the English flag is insulted a warship speeds to the spot and John Bull wants to know the reason why.
Why did Leopold seek American capital and why did he pick out Thomas F. Ryan? There are several motives and I will deal with them in order. In the first place American capital is about the only non-political money in the world. The English pound, for example, always flies the Union Jack and is a highly sensitive commodity. When England puts money into an enterprise she immediately makes the Foreign Office an accessory. German overseas enterprise is even more meddlesome. It has always been the first aid to poisonous and pernicious penetration. Even French capital is flavoured with imperialism despite the fact that it is the product of a democracy. Our dollars are not hitched to the star of empire. We have no dreams of world conquest. It is the safest politically to deal with, and Leopold recognized this fact.
In the second place he did not want anything to interfere with his Congo rubber industry. Now we get to the real reason, perhaps, why he sent for Ryan. In conjunction with the late Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, Ryan had developed the rubber industry in Mexico, by extracting rubber from the guayele shrub which grows wild in the desert. Leopold knew this—he had a way of finding out about things—and he sought to kill two birds with one stone. He wanted this Mexican process and at the same time he needed capital for the Congo. In any event, Ryan went to see him and the Forminiere was born.
There is no need of rehearsing here the concrete details of this enterprise. All we want are the essential facts. Leopold realized that the Forminiere was the last business venture of his life and he projected it on a truly kingly scale. It was the final chance for huge grants and the result was that the Forminiere received the mining and mineral rights to more than 7,000,000 acres, and other concessions for agriculture aggregating 2,500,000 acres in addition.
The original capital was only 3,000,000 francs but this has been increased from time to time until it is now more than 10,000,000 francs. The striking feature of the organization was the provision inserted by Leopold that made Belgium a partner. One-half of the shares were assigned to the Crown. The other half was divided into two parts. One of these parts was subscribed by the King and the Société Generale of Belgium, and the other was taken in its entirety by Ryan. Subsequently Ryan took in as associates Daniel Guggenheim, Senator Aldrich, Harry Payne Whitney and John Hays Hammond. When Leopold died his share went to his heirs. Upon the death of Aldrich his interest was acquired by Ryan, who is the principal American owner. No shares have ever been sold and none will be. The original trust certificate issued to Ryan and Guggenheim remains intact. The company therefore remains a close corporation in every respect and as such is unique among kindred enterprises.
II
At this point the question naturally arises—what is the Société Generale? To ask it in Belgium would be on a par with inquiring the name of the king. Its bank notes are in circulation everywhere and it is known to the humblest peasant.
The Société Generale was organized in 1822 and is therefore one of the oldest, if not the oldest, joint stock bank of the Continent. The general plan of the famous Deutsche Bank of Berlin, which planted the German commercial flag everywhere, and which provided a large part of the bone and sinew of the Teutonic world-wide exploitation campaign, was based upon it. With finance as with merchandising, the German is a prize imitator.
The Société Generale, however, is much more than a bank. It is the dynamo that drives Belgian enterprise throughout the globe. We in America pride ourselves on the fact that huge combinations of capital geared up to industry are a specialty entirely our own. We are much mistaken. Little Belgium has in the Société an agency for development unique among financial institutions. Its imposing marble palace on the Rue Royale is the nerve center of a corporate life that has no geographical lines. With a capital of 62,000,000 francs it has piled up reserves of more than 400,000,000 francs. In addition to branches called "filial banks" throughout Belgium, it also controls the powerful "Banque pour l'Etranger," which is established in London, Paris, New York, Cairo, and the Far East.
One distinctive feature of the Société Generale is its close alliance with the Government. It is a sort of semi-official National Treasury and performs for Belgium many of the functions that the Bank of England transacts for the United Kingdom. But it has infinitely more vigour and push than the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street in London. Its leading officials are required to appear on all imposing public occasions such as coronations and the opening of Parliament. The Belgian Government applies to the Société Generale whenever any national financial enterprise is to be inaugurated and counts upon it to take the initial steps. Thus it became the backbone of Leopold's ramified projects and it was natural that he should invoke its assistance in the organization of the Forminiere.
Long before the Forminiere came into being, the Société Generale was the chief financial factor in the Congo. With the exception of the Huileries du Congo Belge, which is British, it either dominates or has large holdings in every one of the sixteen major corporations doing business in the Colony and whose combined total capitalization is more than 200,000,000 francs. This means that it controls railways and river transport, and the cotton, gold, rubber, ivory and diamond output.
The custodians of this far-flung financial power are the money kings of Belgium. Chief among them is Jean Jadot, Governor of the Société Generale—the institution still designates its head by this ancient title—and President of the Forminiere. In him and his colleagues you find those elements of self-made success so dear to the heart of the human interest historian. It would be difficult to find anywhere a more picturesque group of men than those who, through their association with King Leopold and the Société, have developed the Congo and so many other enterprises.
Jadot occupies today the same position in Belgium that the late J. P. Morgan held in his prime in America. He is the foremost capitalist. Across the broad, flat-topped desk of his office in that marble palace in the Rue Royale the tides of Belgian finance ebb and flow. Just as Morgan's name made an underwriting in New York so does Jadot's put the stamp of authority on it in Brussels. Morgan inherited a great name and a fortune. Jadot made his name and his millions.
When you analyze the lives of American multi-millionaires you find a curious repetition of history. Men like John D. Rockefeller, Henry H. Rogers, Thomas F. Ryan, and Russell Sage began as grocery clerks in small towns. Something in the atmosphere created by spice and sugar must have developed the money-making germ. With the plutocrats of Belgium it was different. Practically all of them, and especially those who ruled the financial institutions, began as explorers or engineers. This shows the intimate connection that exists between Belgium and her overseas interests.
Jadot is a good illustration. At twenty he graduated as engineer from Louvain University. At thirty-five he had directed the construction of the tramways of Cairo and of the Lower Egyptian Railways. He was now caught up in Leopold's great dream of Belgian expansion. The moment that the king obtained the concession for constructing the 1,200 mile railway from Pekin to Hankow he sent Jadot to China to take charge. Within eight years he completed this task in the face of almost insuperable difficulties, including a Boxer uprising, which cost the lives of some of his colleagues and tested his every resource.
In 1905 he entered the Société Generale. At once he became fired with Leopold's enthusiasm for the Congo and the necessity for making it an outlet for Belgium. Jadot was instrumental in organizing the Union Miniere and was also the compelling force behind the building of the Katanga Railway. In 1912 he became Vice Governor of the Société and the following year assumed the Governorship. In addition to being President of the Forminiere he is also head of the Union Miniere and of the new railroad which is to connect the Katanga with the Lower Congo.
When you meet Jadot you are face to face with a human organization tingling with nervous vitality. He reminds me more of E. H. Harriman than of any other American empire builder that I have met, and like Harriman he seems to be incessantly bound up to the telephone. He is keen, quick, and forceful and talks as rapidly as he thinks. Almost slight of body, he at first gives the impression of being a student for his eyes are deep and thoughtful. There is nothing meditative in his manner, however, for he is a live wire in the fullest American sense. Every time I talked with him I went away with a new wonder at his stock of world information. Men of the Jadot type never climb to the heights they attain without a reason. In his case it is first and foremost an accurate knowledge of every undertaking. He never goes into a project without first knowing all about it—a helpful rule, by the way, that the average person may well observe in the employment of his money.
If Jadot is a live wire, then his confrere, Emile Francqui, is a whole battery. Here you touch the most romantic and many-sided career in all Belgian financial history. It reads like a melodrama and is packed with action and adventure. I could almost write a book about any one of its many stirring phases.
At fourteen Francqui was a penniless orphan. He worked his way through a regimental school and at twenty was commissioned a sub-lieutenant. It was 1885 and the Congo Free State had just been launched. Having studied engineering he was sent out at once to Boma to join the Topographic Brigade. During this first stay in the Congo he was in charge of a boat-load of workmen engaged in wharf construction. The captain of a British gunboat hailed him and demanded that he stop. Francqui replied,
"If you try to stop me I will lash my boat to yours and destroy it with dynamite." He had no further trouble.
After three years service in the Congo he returned to Brussels and became the military instructor of Prince Albert, now King of the Belgians. The African fever was in his veins. He heard that a mission was about to depart for Zanzibar and East Africa. A knowledge of English was a necessary part of the equipment of the chief officer. Francqui wanted this job but he did not know a syllable of English. He went to a friend and confided his ambition.
"Are you willing to take a chance with one word?" asked his colleague.
"I am," answered the young officer.
He thereupon acquired the word "yes," his friend's injunction being, "If you say 'yes' to every question you can probably carry it off."
Francqui thereupon went to the Foreign Office and was immediately asked in English:
"Can you speak English?"
"Yes," was his immediate retort.
"Are you willing to undertake the hazards of this journey to Zanzibar?" queried the interrogator.
"Yes," came the reply.
Luck was with Francqui for, as his good angel had prophesied, his one word of English met every requirement and he got the assignment. Since that time, I might add, he has acquired a fluent command of the English language. Francqui has always been willing to take a chance and lead a forlorn hope.
It was in the early nineties that his exploits made his name one of the greatest in African conquest and exploration. He went out to the Congo as second in command of what was known as the Bia Expedition, sent to explore the Katanga and adjacent territory. After two hard years of incessant campaigning the expedition fell into hard lines. Captain Bia succumbed to smallpox and the column encountered every conceivable hardship. Men died by the score and there was no food. Francqui took charge, and by his indomitable will held the force together, starving and suffering with his men. During this experience he travelled more than 5,000 miles on foot and through a region where no other white man had ever gone before. He explored the Luapula, the headwaters of the Congo, and opened up a new world to civilization. No other single Congo expedition save that of Stanley made such an important contribution to the history of the Colony.
Most men would have been satisfied to rest with this achievement. With Francqui it simply marked a milepost in his life. In 1896, when he resigned from the army, Leopold had fixed his eyes on China as a scene of operations, and he sent Francqui there to clinch the Pekin-Hankow concession, which he did. In the course of these negotiations he met Jadot, who was later to become his associate both in the Société Generale and in the Forminiere.
In 1901 Francqui again went to China, this time as agent of the Compagnie d'Orient, which coveted the coal mines of Kaiping that were supposed to be among the richest in the world. The British and Germans also desired this valuable property which had been operated for some years by a Chinese company. As usual, Francqui got what he went after and took possession of the property. The crude Chinese method of mining had greatly impaired the workings and they had to be entirely reconstructed. Among the engineers employed was an alert, smooth-faced, keen-minded young American named Herbert Hoover.
Upon his return to Brussels Francqui allied himself with Colonel Thys, who was head of the Banque d'Outremer, the rival of the Société Generale. After he had mastered the intricacies of banking he became a director of the Société and with Jadot forged to the front in finance. If Jadot stood as the Morgan, then Francqui became the Stillman of the Belgian money world.
Then came the Great War and the German avalanche which overwhelmed Belgium. Her banks were converted into hospitals; her industry lay prostrate; her people faced starvation. Some vital agency was necessary to centralize relief at home in the same way that the Commission for Relief in Belgium,—the famous "C. R. B."—crystallized it abroad.
The Comite Rationale was formed by Belgians to feed and clothe the native population and it became the disbursing agent for the "C. R. B." Francqui was chosen head of this body and directed it until the armistice. It took toll of all his energy, diplomacy and instinct for organization. Needless to say it was one of the most difficult of all relief missions in the war. Francqui was a loyal Belgian and he was surrounded by the suspicious and domineering German conquerors. Yet they trusted him, and his word in Belgium for more than four years was absolute law. He was, in truth, a benevolent dictator.
His war life illustrates one of the quaint pranks that fate often plays. As soon as the "C. R. B." was organized in London Francqui hastened over to England to confer with the American organizers. To his surprise and delight he encountered in its master spirit and chairman, the smooth-faced young engineer whom he had met out in the Kaiping coal mines before. It was the first time that he and Hoover had seen each other since their encounter in China. They now worked shoulder to shoulder in the monster mercy of all history.
Francqui is blunt, silent, aggressive. When Belgium wants something done she instinctively turns to him. In 1920, after the delay in fixing the German reparation embarrassed the country, and liquid cash was imperative, he left Brussels on three days' notice and within a fortnight from the time he reached New York had negotiated a fifty-million-dollar loan. He is as potent in official life as in finance for as Special Minister of State without portfolio he is a real power behind a real throne.
Although Francqui is a director in the Société Generale, he is also what we would call Chairman of the Board of Banque d'Outremer. This shows that the well-known institution of "community of interests" is not confined to the United States. With Jadot he represents the Société in the Forminiere Board. I have used these two men to illustrate the type represented by the Belgian financial kings. I could mention various others. They include Alexander Delcommune, famous as Congo fighter and explorer, who is one of the leading figures of the Banque d'Outremer; Edmond Solvay, the industrial magnate, and Edward Bunge, the Antwerp merchant prince. Almost without exception they and their colleagues have either lived in the Congo, or have been guided in their fortunes by it.
You have now had the historical approach with all personal side-lights to the hour when America actually invaded the Congo. As soon as Leopold and Ryan finally got together the king said, "The Congo must have American engineers. They are the best in the world." Thus it came about that Central Africa, like South Africa, came under the galvanizing hand of the Yankee technical expert. At Kimberley and Johannesburg, however, the task was comparatively easy. The mines were accessible and the country was known. With Central Africa it was a different and more dangerous matter. The land was wild, hostile natives abounded on all sides, and going in was like firing a shot in the dark.
The American invasion was in two sections. One was the group of engineers headed by Sydney H. Ball and R. D. L. Mohun, known as the Ball-Mohun Expedition, which conducted the geological investigation. The other was in charge of S. P. Verner, an American who had done considerable pioneering in the Congo, and devoted itself entirely to rubber. The latter venture was under the auspices of the American Congo Company, which expected to employ the Mexican process in the Congo. After several years the attempt was abandoned although the company still exists.
I will briefly narrate its experience to show that the product which raised the tempest around King Leopold's head and which for years was synonymous with the name of the Congo, has practically ceased to be an important commercial commodity in the Colony. The reason is obvious. In Leopold's day nine-tenths of the world's supply of rubber was wild and came from Brazil and the Congo. It cost about fifty cents a pound to gather and sold for a dollar. Today more than ninety per cent of the rubber supply is grown on plantations in the Dutch East Indies, the Malay States, and the Straits Settlements, where it costs about twenty cents a pound to gather and despite the big slump in price since the war, is profitable. In the Congo there is still wild rubber and a movement is under way to develop large plantations. Labor is scarce, however, while in the East millions of coolies are available. This tells the whole rubber story.
The Ball-Mohun Expedition was more successful than its mate for it opened up a mineral empire and laid the foundations of the Little America that you shall soon see. Mohun was administrative head and Ball the technical head and chief engineer. Other members were Millard K. Shaler, afterwards one of Hoover's most efficient aids in the relief of Belgium, and Arthur F. Smith, geologists; Roland B. Oliver, topographer; A. E. H. and C. A. Reid, and N. Janot, prospectors.
Mohun, who had been engaged on account of his knowledge of the country, had been American Consul at Zanzibar and at Boma, and first left diplomacy to fight the Arab slave-traders in the interior. When someone asked him why he had quit the United States Government service to go on a military mission he said, "I prefer killing Arabs in the interior to killing time at Boma." He figured as one of Richard Harding Davis' "Soldiers of Fortune" and was in every sense a unique personality.
You get some idea of the hazards that confronted the American pioneers when I say that when they set forth for the Kasai region, which is the southwestern part of the Congo, late in 1907, they were accompanied by a battalion of native troops under Belgian officers. Often they had to fight their way before they could take specimens. On one occasion Ball was prospecting in a region hitherto uninvaded by the white man. He was attacked by a large body of hostile savages and a pitched battle followed. In informal Congo history this engagement is known as "The Battle of Ball's Run," although Ball did no running. As recently as 1915 one of the Forminiere prospectors, E. G. Decker, was killed by the fierce Batshoks, the most belligerent of the Upper Kasai tribes. The Ball-Mohun group, which was the first of many expeditions, remained in the field more than two years and covered a wide area.
Up to this time gold and copper were the only valuable minerals that had been discovered in the Congo and the Americans naturally went after them. Much to their surprise, they found diamonds and thereby opened up a fresh source of wealth for the Colony. The first diamond was found at Mai Munene, which means "Big Water," a considerable waterfall discovered by Livingstone. This region, which is watered by the Kasai River, became the center of what is now known as the Congo Diamond Fields and remains the stronghold of American engineering and financial enterprise in Central Africa. On a wooded height not far from the headwaters of the Kasai, these path-finding Americans established a post called Tshikapa, the name of a small river nearby. It is the capital of Little America in the jungle and therefore became the objective of the second stage of my Congo journey.
III
Kinshassa is nearly a thousand miles from Tshikapa. To get there I had to retrace my way up the Congo as far as Kwamouth, where the Kasai empties into the parent stream. I also found that it was necessary to change boats at Dima and continue on the Kasai to Djoko Punda. Here begins the jungle road to the diamond fields.
Up to this time I had enjoyed the best facilities that the Congo could supply in the way of transport. Now I faced a trip that would not only try patience but had every element of the unknown, which in the Congo means the uncomfortable. Fortunately, the "Lusanga," one of the Huileries du Congo Belge steamers, was about to start for the Kwilu River, which branches off from the Kasai, and the company was kind enough to order it to take me to Dima, which was off the prescribed itinerary of the vessel.
On a brilliant morning at the end of June I set forth. Nelson was still my faithful servant and his smile and teeth shone as resplendently as ever. The only change in him was that his appetite for chikwanga had visibly increased. Somebody had told him at Kinshassa that the Kasai country teemed with cannibals. Being one of the world's champion eaters, he shrank from being eaten himself. I promised him an extra allowance of food and a khaki uniform that I had worn in the war, and he agreed to take a chance.
Right here let me give an evidence of the Congo native's astounding quickness to grasp things. I do not refer to his light-fingered propensities, however. When we got to Kinshassa Nelson knew scarcely a word of the local dialect. When we left a week later, he could jabber intelligently with any savage he met. On the four weeks' trip from Elizabethville he had picked up enough French to make himself understood. The Central African native has an aptitude for languages that far surpasses that of the average white man.
I was the only passenger on the "Lusanga," which had been reconstructed for Lord Leverhulme's trip through the Congo in 1914. I occupied the suite installed for him and it was my last taste of luxury for many a day. The captain, Albert Carrie, was a retired lieutenant in the British Royal Navy, and the chief engineer was a Scotchman. The Congo River seemed like an old friend as we steamed up toward Kwamouth. As soon as we turned into the Kasai I found that conditions were different than on the main river. There was an abundance of fuel, both for man and boat. The daily goat steak of the Congo was relieved by duck and fish. The Kasai region is thickly populated and I saw a new type of native, lighter in colour than elsewhere, and more keen and intelligent.
The women of the Kasai are probably the most attractive in the Congo. This applies particularly to the Batetelas, who are of light brown colour. From childhood the females of this tribe have a sense of modesty that is in sharp contrast with the nudity that prevails elsewhere throughout the country. They swathe their bodies from neck to ankle with gaily coloured calico. I am often asked if the scant attire in Central Africa shocked me. I invariably reply by saying that the contemporary feminine fashion of near-undress in America and Europe made me feel that some of the chocolate-hued ladies of the jungle were almost over-clothed!
The fourth day of my trip was also the American Fourth of July. Captain Carrie and I celebrated by toasting the British and American Navies, and it was not in Kasai water. This day also witnessed a somewhat remarkable revelation of the fact that world economic unrest has penetrated to the very heart of the primitive regions. While the wood-boys were getting fuel at a native post, Carrie and I went ashore to take a walk and visit a chief who had once been in Belgium. When we got back to the boat we found that all the natives had suspended work and were listening to an impassioned speech by one of the black wheelmen. All these boats have native pilots. This boy, who only wore a loin cloth, was urging his fellows not to work so hard. Among other things he said:
"The white man eats big food and takes a big sleep in the middle of the day and you ought to do the same thing. The company that owns this boat has much money and you should all be getting more wages."
Carrie stopped the harangue, fined the pilot a week's pay, and the men went back to work, but the poison had been planted. This illuminating episode is just one of the many evidences of industrial insurgency that I found in Africa from the moment I struck Capetown. In the Rand gold mining district, for example, the natives have been organized by British agitators and it probably will not be long before Central Africa has the I. W. W. in its midst! Certainly the "I Won't Works" already exist in large numbers.
This essentially modern spirit was only one of the many surprises that the Congo native disclosed. Another was the existence of powerful secret societies which have codes, "grips," and pass-words. Some antedate the white man, indulge in human sacrifice, and have branches in a dozen sections. Although Central Africa is a land where the husband can stray from home at will, the "lodge night" is thus available as an excuse for domestic indiscretion.
The most terrible of these orders is the Society of the Leopard, formed to provide a novel and devilish method of disposing of enemies. The members wear leopard skins or spotted habits and throttle their foes with a glove to which steel blades are affixed. The victim appears to have been killed by the animal that cannot change its spots. To make the illusion complete, the ground where the victim has lain is marked with a stick whose end resembles the feet of the leopard.
The leopard skin has a curious significance in the Congo. For occasions where the white man takes an oath on the Bible, the savage steps over one of these skins to swear fealty. If two chiefs have had a quarrel and make up, they tear a skin in two and throw the pieces into the river, to show that the feud is rent asunder. It corresponds to the pipe of peace of the American Indian.
Another secret society in the Congo is the Lubuki, whose initiation makes riding the goat seem like a childish amusement. The candidate is tied to a tree and a nest of black ants is distributed over his body. He is released only after he is nearly stung to death. A repetition of this jungle third degree is threatened for violation of any of the secrets of the order, the main purpose of which is to graft on non-members for food and other necessities.
In civilized life the members of a fraternal society are summoned to a meeting by telephone or letter. In the Congo they are haled by the tom-tom, which is the wireless of the woods. These huge drums have an uncanny carrying power. The beats are like the dots and dashes of telegraphy. All the native news of Central Africa is transmitted from village to village in this way.
I could continue this narrative of native habits and customs indefinitely but we must get back to the "Lusanga." On board was a real character. He was Peter the capita. In the Congo every group of native workmen is in charge of a capita, who would be designated a foreman in this country. Life and varied experience had battered Peter sadly. He spoke English, French, German, Portuguese, and half a dozen of the Congo dialects. He learned German while a member of an African dancing team that performed at the Winter Garden in Berlin. His German almost had a Potsdam flavour. He told me that he had danced before the former Kaiser and had met many members of the Teutonic nobility. Yet the thing that stood out most vividly in his memory was the taste of German beer. He sighed for it daily.
Six days after leaving Kinshassa I reluctantly bade farewell to Peter and the "Lusanga" at Dima. Here I had the first piece of hard luck on the whole trip. The little steamer that was to take me up the Kasai River to Djoko Punda had departed five days before and I was forced to wait until she returned. Fifteen years ago Dima was the wildest kind of jungle. I found it a model, tropical post with dozens of brick houses, a shipyard and machine shops, avenues of palm trees and a farm. It is the headquarters of the Kasai Company in the Congo.
I had a brick bungalow to myself and ate with the Managing Director, Monsieur Adrian Van den Hove. He knew no English and my alleged French was pretty bad. Yet we met three times a day at the table and carried on spirited conversations. There was only one English-speaking person within a radius of a hundred miles and I had read all my English books. I vented my impatience in walking, for I covered at least fifteen miles through the jungle every day. This proceeding filled both the Belgians and the natives with astonishment. The latter particularly could not understand why a man walked about the country aimlessly. Usually a native will only walk when he can move in the direction of food or sleep. On these solitary trips I went through a country that still abounds in buffalo. Occasionally you see an elephant. It is one thing to watch a big tusker doing his tricks in a circus tent, but quite another to hear him floundering through the woods, tearing off huge branches of trees as he moves along with what seems to be an incredible speed for so heavy an animal.
There came the glad Sunday—it was my thirteenth day at Dima—when I heard the whistle of the steamboat. I dashed down to the beach and there was the little forty-ton "Madeleine." I welcomed her as a long-lost friend and this she proved to be. The second day afterwards I went aboard and began a diverting chapter of my experience. The "Madeleine" is a type of the veteran Congo boat. In the old days the Belgian pioneers fought natives from its narrow deck. Despite incessant combat with sand-banks, snags and swift currents—all these obstructions abound in the Kasai River—she was still staunch. In command was the only Belgian captain that I had in the Congo, and he had been on these waters for twenty years with only one holiday in Europe during the entire time.
I occupied the alleged cabin-de-luxe, the large room that all these boats must furnish in case an important State functionary wants to travel. My fellow passengers were two Catholic priests and three Belgian "agents," as the Congo factors are styled. I ate alone on the main deck in front of my cabin, with Nelson in attendance.
Now began a journey that did not lack adventure. It was the end of the dry season and the Kasai was lower than ever before. The channel was almost a continuous sand-bank. We rested on one of them for a whole day. I was now well into the domain of the hippopotamus. I am not exaggerating when I say that the Kasai in places is alive with them. You can shoot one of these monsters from the bridge of the river boats almost as easily as you could pick off a sparrow from the limb of a park tree. I got tired of watching them. The flesh of the hippopotamus is unfit for white consumption, but the natives regard it as a luxury. The white man who kills a hippo is immediately acclaimed a hero. One reason is that with spears the black finds it difficult to get the better of one of these animals.
Our first step was at a Lutheran Mission set in the middle of a populous village. As we approached I saw the American flag hanging over the door of the most pretentious mud and grass house. When I went ashore I found that the missionaries—a man and his wife—were both American citizens. The husband was a Swede who had gone out to Kansas in his boyhood to work on a farm. There he married a Kansas girl, who now speaks English with a Swedish accent. After spreading the gospel in China and elsewhere, they settled down in this lonely spot on the Kasai River.
I was immediately impressed with the difference between the Congo River and the Kasai. The Congo is serene, brooding, majestic, and fringed with an endless verdure. The Kasai, although 1,500 miles in length, is narrower and more pugnacious. Its brown banks and grim flanking mountains offer a welcome change from the eternal green of the great river that gives the Colony its name. The Kasai was discovered by Livingstone in 1854.
I also got another change. Two days after I left Dima we were blanketed with heavy fog every morning and the air was raw and chill. On the Kasai you can have every experience of trans-Atlantic travel with the sole exception of seasickness.
As I proceeded up the Kasai I found continued evidence of the advance in price of every food commodity. The omnipresent chicken that fetched a franc in 1914 now brings from five to ten. My old friend the goat has risen from ten to thirty francs and he was as tough as ever, despite the rise. But foodstuffs are only a small part of these Congo economic troubles.
We have suffered for some time under the burden of our inseparable companion, the High Cost of Living. It is slight compared with the High Cost of Loving in the Congo. Here you touch a real hardship. Before the war a first-class wife—all wives are bought—sold for fifty francs. Today the market price for a choice spouse is two hundred francs and it takes hard digging for the black man to scrape up this almost prohibitive fee. Thus the High Cost of Matrimony enters the list of universal distractions.