Chapter M: P. called on us to get out of the rain, and in conversation with (1)

M. Q. in presence of myself and R., said: ‘The only way to get
rubber is to fight for it. The natives are paid 35 centimes per
kilog., it is claimed, but that includes a large profit on the
cloth; the amount of rubber is controlled by the number of guns,
and not the number of bales of cloth. The S. A. B. on the Bussira,
with 150 guns, get only 10 tons (rubber) a-month; we, the State, at
Momboyo, with 130 guns, get 13 tons per month.’ ‘So you count by
guns?’ I asked him. ‘Partout,’ M. P. said, ‘Each time the corporal
goes out to get rubber cartridges are given to him. He must bring
back all not used; and for every one used, he must bring back a
right hand.’ M. P. told me that sometimes they shot a cartridge at
an animal in hunting; they then cut off a hand from a living man.
As to the extent to which this is carried on, he informed me that
in six months they, the State, on the Momboyo River, had used 6,000
cartridges, which means that 6,000 people are killed or mutilated.
It means more than 6,000, for the people have told me repeatedly
that the soldiers kill children with the butt of their guns.

In conversation upon this entry, I was told that the M. P. referred to was an officer in the Government service, who, at the date in question, had come down from the Momboyo River (a tributary of the great Ruki River, and forming a part, I believe, of the “Domaine de la Couronne”) invalided, on his way home. He had come down in very bad health. He stated then that he was going home, not to return to the Congo, but he died, only a little way further down the river, very soon afterwards.

The same gentleman stated that he had reported this conversation orally at Boma, as instancing the methods of exaction then in force. It is probable that the issue of the circular quoted was not unconnected with these remarks.

The region drained by the Lulongo being of great fertility has, in the past, maintained a large population. In the days prior to the establishment of civilized rule in the interior of Africa, this river offered a constant source of supply to the slave markets of the Upper Congo. The towns around the lower Lulongo River raided the interior tribes, whose prolific humanity provided not only servitors, but human meat for those stronger than themselves. Cannibalism had gone hand in hand with slave raiding, and it was no uncommon spectacle to see gangs of human beings being conveyed for exposure and sale in the local markets. I had in the past, when travelling on the Lulongo River, more than once viewed such a scene. On one occasion a woman was killed in the village I was passing through, and her head and other portions of her were brought and offered for sale to some of the crew of the steamer I was on. Sights of this description are to-day impossible in any part of the country I traversed, and the full credit for their suppression must be given to the authorities of the Congo Government. It is, perhaps, to be regretted that in its efforts to suppress such barbarous practices the Congo Government should have had to rely upon, often, very savage agencies wherewith to combat savagery. The troops employed in punitive measures were--and often are--themselves savages, only removed by outward garb from those they are sent to punish. Moreover, the measures employed to obtain recruits for the public service were themselves often but little removed from the malpractices that service was designed to suppress. The following copy of an order for Government workmen drawn up by a former Commissaire of the Equator District, and having reference to the Maringa affluent of the Lulongo River indicates that the Congo Government itself did not hesitate some years ago to purchase slaves (required as soldiers or workmen), who could only be obtained for sale by the most deplorable means:--

“Le Chef Ngulu de Wangata est envoyé dans la Maringa, pour m’y
acheter des esclaves. Prière à M.M. les agents de l’A.B.I.R. de
bien vouloir me signaler les méfaits que celui-ci pourrait
commettre en route.

“Le Capitaine-Commandant, (Signé) “SARRAZZYN.”

“_Colquilhatville, le 1er Mai, 1896._”

This document was shown to me during the course of my journey. The officer who issued this direction was, I was informed, for a considerable period chief executive authority of the district; and I heard him frequently spoken of by the natives who referred to him by the sobriquet he had earned in the district, “Widjima,” or “Darkness.”

The course of the Lulongo River below Bassakanusu to its junction with the Congo lies outside the limits of the A.B.I.R. Concession, and the region is, I believe, regarded as one of the free-trading districts wherein no exclusive right to the products of the soil is recognized. The only trading-house in this district is one termed the La Lulanga, which has three depôts, or factories, along the river bank, the principal of which is at Mampoko. This Company has a small steamer in which its native produce is collected, but the general transport of all its goods, as in the case of the Concession Societies, is performed by Government craft. The La Lulanga does not, I understand, enjoy the rights of police as defined by the Governor-General’s Circular of the 20th October, 1900, but it employs a considerable number of armed men equally termed “forest guards.” These men are quartered throughout the lower course of the Lulongo River, and I found that, as with the A.B.I.R., the sole duty they performed was to compel by force the collection of india-rubber or the supplies which each factory needed. As the district in which the La Lulanga Society carries on these operations is one that had already been subjected to still more comprehensive handling by two of the large Concession Companies, who only abandoned it when, as one of their agents informed me, it was nearly exhausted, the stock of rubber vines in it to-day is drawing to an end, and it is only with great difficulty that the natives are able to produce the quantity sufficient to satisfy their local masters. In the course of my dealings with the natives I found that several of the sentries of this Company had quite recently committed gross offences which, until my arrival, appeared to have gone undetected--certainly unpunished. Murder and mutilation were charged against several of them by name by the natives of certain townships close to the head-quarters of this Company, who sought me in the hope that I might help them. These people in several cases said that they had not complained elsewhere because they had felt that it was useless. As long as the rubber tax imposed upon them endured in its present compulsory form with the sanction of the authorities, they said it was idle to draw attention to acts which were but incidental to its collection. The La Lulanga Company, not any more than the A.B.I.R., would seem to have a legal right to levy taxes, but the fact remains that from the natives who supply these two trading Companies with all that they export as well as with their local supplies of food and material, the Congo Government itself requires no contribution to the public revenue. These people, therefore, must be either legally exempted from supporting the Government of their country, or else a portion of the contributions they make to the A.B.I.R. and Lulanga Companies must be claimed by that Government in lieu of the taxes it is justified in imposing on these districts.

In the case of the A.B.I.R. Society, it is said that a portion of the profits are paid into the public revenues of the Congo Government (who hold certain shares in the undertaking), and that these figure annually in the Budget as “produit de porte-feuille.” In making this explanation to me, an agent of one of the Upper Congo trading Companies said the term should more correctly be “produit de porte-fusil,” and to judge from the large numbers of armed men I saw employed, the correction was not inapposite.

The Concession Companies, I believe, account for the armed men in their service on the ground that their factories and agents must be protected against the possible violence of the rude forest dwellers with whom they deal; but this legitimate need for safeguarding European establishments does not suffice to account for the presence, far from those establishments, of large numbers of armed men quartered throughout the native villages, and who exercise upon their surroundings an influence far from protective. The explanation offered me of this state of things was that, as the “impositions” laid upon the natives were regulated by law, and were calculated on the scale of public labour the Government had a right to require of the people, the collection of these “impositions” had to be strictly enforced. When I pointed out that the profit of this system was not reaped by the Government, but by a commercial Company, and figured in the public returns of that Company’s affairs, as well as in the official Government statistics, as the outcome of commercial dealings with the natives, I was informed that the “impositions” were in reality trade, “for, as you observe, we pay the natives for the produce they bring in.” “But,” I observed, “you told me just now that these products did not belong to the natives, but to you, the Concessionnaire, who owned the soil; how, then, do you buy from them what is already yours?” “We do not buy the india-rubber. What we pay to the native is a remuneration for his labour in collecting our produce on our land, and bringing it to us.”

Since it was thus to the labour of the native alone that the profits of the Company were attributed, I inquired whether he was not protected by contract with his employer; but I was here referred back to the statement that the native performed these services as a public duty required of him by his Government. He was not a contracted labourer at all, but a free man, dwelling in his own home, and was simply acquitting himself of an “imposition” laid upon him by the Government, “of which we are but the collectors by right of our Concession.” “Your Concession, then, implies,” I said, “that you have been conceded not only a certain area of land, but also the people dwelling on that land?” This, however, was not accepted either, and I was assured that the people were absolutely free, and owed no service to any one but to the Government of the country. But there was no explanation offered to me that was not at once contradicted by the next. One said it was a tax, an obligatory burden laid upon the people, such as all Governments have the undoubted right of imposing; but this failed to explain how, if a tax, it came to be collected by the agents of a trading firm, and figured as the outcome of their trade dealings with the people, still less, how, if it were a tax, it could be justly imposed every week or fortnight in the year, instead of once, or at most, twice a year.

Another asserted that it was clearly legitimate commerce with the natives because these were well paid and very happy. He could not then explain the presence of so many armed men in their midst, or the reason for tying up men, women, and children, and of maintaining in each trading establishment a local prison, termed a “maison des otages,” wherein recalcitrant native traders endured long periods of confinement.

A third admitted that there was no law on the Congo Statute Book constituting his trading establishment a Government taxing station, and that since the product of his dealings with the natives figured in his Company’s balance-sheets as trade, and paid customs duty to the Government on export, and a dividend to the shareholders, and as he himself drew a commission of 2 per cent. on his turnover, it must be trade; but this exponent could not explain how, if these operations were purely commercial, they rested on a privilege denied to others, for since, as he asserted, the products of his district could neither be worked nor bought by any one but himself, it was clear they were not merchandise, which, to be merchandise, must be marketable. The summing up of the situation by the majority of those with whom I sought to discuss it was that, in fact, it was forced labour conceived in the true interest of the native, who, if not controlled in this way, would spend his days in idleness, unprofitable to himself and the general community. The collection of the products of the soil by the more benevolent methods adopted by the Trading Companies was, in any case, preferable to those the Congo Government would itself employ to compel obedience to this law, and therefore if I saw women and children seized as hostages and kept in detention until rubber or other things were brought in, it was better that this should be done by the cap-gun of the “forest guard” than by the Albini armed soldiers of the Government who, if once impelled into a district, would overturn the entire country side.

No more satisfactory explanation than this outline was anywhere offered me of what I saw in the A.B.I.R. and Lulanga districts. It is true alternatives of excuse with differing interpretations of what I saw were offered me in several quarters, but these were so obviously untrue, that they could not be admitted as having any real relation to the things which came before me.

At a village I touched at up the Lulonga River, a small collection of dwellings named Z*, the people complained that there was no rubber left in their district, and yet that the La Lulanga Company required of them each fortnight a fixed quantity they could not supply. Three forest guards of that Company were quartered, it was said, in this village, one of whom I found on duty, the two others, he informed me, having gone to Mampoko to convoy the fortnight’s rubber. No live-stock of any kind could be seen or purchased in this town, which had only a few years ago been a large and populous community, filled with people and well stocked with sheep, goats, ducks, and fowls. Although I walked through most of it, I could only count ten men with their families. There were said to be others in the part of the town I did not visit, but the entire community I saw were living in wretched houses and in most visible distress. Three months previously (in May, I believe), they said a Government force, commanded by a white man, had occupied their town owing to their failure to send in to the Mampoko head-quarters of the La Lulanga Company a regular supply of india-rubber, and two men, whose names were given, had been killed by the soldiers at that time.

As Z* lies upon the main stream of the Lulongo River, and is often touched at by passing steamers, I chose for the next inspection a town lying somewhat off this beaten track, where my coming would be quite unexpected. Steaming up a small tributary of the Lulongo, I arrived, unpreceded by any rumour of my coming, at the village of A**. In an open shed I found two sentries of the La Lulanga Company guarding fifteen native women, five of whom had infants at the breast, and three of whom were about to become mothers. The chief of these sentries, a man called S--who was bearing a double-barrelled shot-gun, for which he had a belt of cartridges--at once volunteered an explanation of the reason for these women’s detention. Four of them, he said, were hostages who were being held to insure the peaceful settlement of a dispute between two neighbouring towns, which had already cost the life of a man. His employer, the agent of the La Lulanga Company at B** near by, he said, had ordered these women to be seized and kept until the Chief of the offending town to which they belonged should come in to talk over the palaver. The sentry pointed out that this was evidently a much better way to settle such troubles between native towns than to leave them to be fought out among the people themselves.

The remaining eleven women, whom he indicated, he said he had caught and was detaining as prisoners to compel their husbands to bring in the right amount of india-rubber required of them on next market day. When I asked if it was a woman’s work to collect india-rubber, he said, “No; that, of course, it was man’s work.” “Then why do you catch the women and not the men?” I asked. “Don’t you see,” was the answer, “if I caught and kept the men, who would work the rubber? But if I catch their wives, the husbands are anxious to have them home again, and so the rubber is brought in quickly and quite up to the mark.” When I asked what would become of these women if their husbands failed to bring in the right quantity of rubber on the next market day, he said at once that then they would be kept there until their husbands had redeemed them. Their food, he explained, he made the Chief of A** provide, and he himself saw it given to them daily. They came from more than one village of the neighbourhood, he said, mostly from the Ngombi or inland country, where he often had to catch women to insure the rubber being brought in in sufficient quantity. It was an institution, he explained, that served well and saved much trouble. When his master came each fortnight to A** to take away the rubber so collected, if it was found to be sufficient, the women were released and allowed to return with their husbands, but if not sufficient they would undergo continued detention. The sentry’s statements were clear and explicit, as were equally those of several of the villagers with whom I spoke. The sentry further explained, in answer to my inquiry, that he caught women in this way by direction of his employers. That it was a custom generally adopted and found to work well; that the people were very lazy, and that this was much the simplest way of making them do what was required of them. When asked if he had any use for his shot-gun, he answered that it had been given him by the white man “to frighten people and make them bring in rubber,” but that he had never otherwise used it. I found that the two sentries at A** were complete masters of the town. Everything I needed in the way of food or firewood they at once ordered the men of the town to bring me. One of them, gun over shoulder, marched a procession of men--the Chief of the village at their head--down to the water side, each carrying a bundle of firewood for my steamer. A few chickens which were brought were only purchased through their intermediary, the native owner in each case handing the fowl over to the sentry, who then brought it on board, bargained for it, and took the price agreed upon. When, in the evening, the Chief of the village was invited to come and talk to me, he came in evident fear of the sentries seeing him or overhearing his remarks, and the leader, S, finding him talking to me, peremptorily broke into the conversation and himself answered each question put to the Chief. When I asked this latter if he and his townsmen did not catch fish in the C** River, in which we learned there was much, the sentry, intervening, said it was not the business of these people to catch fish--“they have no time for that, they have got to get the rubber I tell them to.”

At nightfall the fifteen women in the shed were tied together, either neck to neck or ankle to ankle, to secure them for the night, and in this posture I saw them twice during the evening. They were then trying to huddle around a fire. In the morning the leading sentry, before leaving the village, ordered his companion in my hearing to “keep close guard on the prisoners.” I subsequently discovered that this sentry, learning that I was not, as he had at first thought, a missionary, had gone or sent to inform his employer at C** that a strange white man was in the town.

An explanation of what I had witnessed at A** was later preferred by the representative of this Company for my information, but was in such direct conflict with what I had myself observed that it could not be accepted either as explaining the detention of the women I had seen tied neck to neck, or as a refutation of the statements of the sentry, made to me at a time when he had no thought that his avowals had any bearing on his employer’s interests.

From A** I proceeded to Bongandanga, a station of the A.B.I.R. Company which lies some 120 or 130 miles up the Lopori, a tributary of the Lulongo, and only halted for very brief periods _en route_. I arrived at Bongandanga on the 29th August when what was locally termed the rubber market was in full swing. The natives of the surrounding country are, on these market days, which are held at intervals of a fortnight, marched in under a number of armed guards, each native carrying his fortnight’s supply of india-rubber for delivery to the agent of the Company. During my stay at Bongandanga I had frequent occasion to meet the two agents of this Society, who received me with every kindness and hospitality.

The A.B.I.R. station was well built and well cared for, and gave evidence of unremitting industry on the part of those in charge of it. There were two good houses for the European staff and a number of large well-built bamboo stores for the storing and drying of india-rubber. All the houses were constructed of native materials, indeed, with the exception of a small stock of barter goods in one of the stores and the European provisions required for the white men, everything I saw came from the surrounding district, provided in one form or another by its native inhabitants. This applies to practically every European establishment in the interior of the country, the only differences being as to the manner in which the help of the natives may be sought and recompensed. Building material of all kinds from very heavy timber to roofing mats and native string to tie these on with are provided by the natives; but their services in supplying these indispensable adjuncts to civilized existence do not appear to be everywhere equally remunerated. At Bongandanga I saw thirty-three large tree trunks, each of which could not have weighed less than 1/2 a ton, some of them nearer 1 ton, which, I was told, had been felled and carried in by the natives for his use in building a new house. He explained that as the natives came in from different districts fortnightly, and then had only to carry very small baskets of india-rubber, this additional burden was imposed upon them, but that this was one reserved for unwilling workers of india-rubber. It was, in fact, one of the punishments for backward “récolteurs.”

At Bongandanga the men of the district named E**, distant about 20 miles, had been brought in with the rubber from that district. They marched in in a long file, guarded by sentries of the A.B.I.R. Company, and when I visited the factory grounds to observe the progress of the “market,” I was informed by the local agent that there were 242 men actually present. As each man was required, I was told, to bring in 3 kilog. nett of rubber, the quantity actually brought in on that occasion should have yielded about three-quarters of a ton of pure rubber. The rubber brought by each man, after being weighed and found correct, was taken off to be cut up in a large store, and then placed out on drying shelves in other stores. As considerable loss of weight arises in the drying to obtain 3 kilog. nett a dead weight of crude rubber considerably in excess of that quantity must be brought in. There were everywhere sentries in the A.B.I.R. grounds, guarding and controlling the natives, many of whom carried their knives and spears. The sentries were often armed with rifles, some of them with several cartridges slipped between the fingers of the hands ready for instant use; others had cap-guns, with a species of paper cartridge locally manufactured for charging this form of muzzle-loader. The native vendors of the rubber were guarded in detachments or herds, many of them behind a barricade which stretched in front of a house I was told was the factory prison, termed locally, I found, the “maison des otages.” The rubber as brought up by each man under guard, was weighed by one of the two agents of the A.B.I.R. present, who sat upon the verandah of his house. If the rubber were found to be of the right weight its vendor would be led off with it to the cutting up store or to one of the drying stores. In the former were fully 80 or 100 natives who had already passed muster, squatting on raised cane platforms, busily cutting up into the required sizes the rubber which had been passed and accepted. At the corners of these platforms stood, or equally squatted, sentries of the A.B.I.R. with their rifles ready.

In another store where rubber was being dried seven natives came in while I was inspecting it carrying baskets which were filled with the cut-up rubber, which they then at once began sorting and spreading on high platforms. These seven men were guarded by four sentries armed with rifles.

Somewhat differing explanations were offered me of the reasons for the constant guarding of the natives I observed during the course of the “market.” This was first said to be a necessary precaution to insure tranquillity and order within the trading factory during the presence there of so many raw and sturdy savages. But when I drew attention to the close guard kept upon the natives in the drying and cutting sheds, I was told that these were “prisoners.” If the rubber brought by its native vendor were found on the weighing machine to be seriously under the required weight, the defaulting individual was detained to be dealt with in the “maison des otages.” One such case occurred while I was on the ground. The defaulter was directed to be taken away, and was dragged off by some of the sentries, who forced him on to the ground to remain until the market was over. While being held by these men he struggled to escape, and one of them struck him in the mouth whence blood issued, and he then remained passive. I did not learn how this individual subsequently purged his offence, but when on a later occasion I visited the inclosure in front of the prison I counted fifteen men and youths who were being guarded while they worked at mat-making for the use of the station buildings. These men, I was then told, were some of the defaulters of the previous market day, who were being kept as compulsory workmen to make good the deficiency in their rubber.

Payments made to the rubber-bringers, depending on the quantity brought, consisted of knives, matchets, strings of beads, and sometimes a little salt. I saw many men who got a wooden handled knife of Sheffield cutlery, good and strong--others got a matchet. The largest of these knives with a 9-inch blade, and the smaller with a 5-inch, cost in Europe, I find, 2_s._ 10_d._, and 1_s._ 5_d._ per dozen respectively, less 2-1/2 per cent. cash discount. The men who got the knife of the larger kind, or a matchet, had brought in, I understood, a full basket of pure rubber, which may have represented a European valuation of some 27 fr. To the original cost of one of these knives, say 2-3/4_d._, should be added fully 100 per cent. to cover transport charges, so that their local cost would be about 6_d._ Among the natives themselves these knives pass at 25 rods (1·25 fr.) and 15 rods (75 centimes) each. From two of these rubber workers I later purchased two of these knives, giving twenty-five teaspoonfuls of salt for the larger, and six teaspoonfuls with an empty bottle for the smaller. From a third member of their party, whose payment had consisted of a string of thirty-nine blue and white glass beads (locally valued at 5 rods), I bought his fortnight’s salary for five teaspoonfuls of salt. This youth, indeed, confessed that his basket of rubber had not been so well filled as those of the others.

I went to the homes of these men some miles away and found out their circumstances. To get the rubber they had first to go fully a two days’ journey from their homes, leaving their wives, and being absent for from five to six days. They were seen to the forest limits under guard, and if not back by the sixth day trouble was likely to ensue. To get the rubber in the forests--which generally speaking are very swampy--involves much fatigue and often fruitless searching for a well-flowing vine. As the area of supply diminishes, moreover, the demand for rubber constantly increases. Some little time back I learned the Bongandanga district supplied 7 tons of rubber a-month, a quantity which it was hoped would shortly be increased to 10 tons. The quantity of rubber brought by the three men in question would have represented, probably, for the three of them certainly not less than 7 kilog. of pure rubber. That would be a very safe estimate, and at an average of 7 fr. per kilog. they might be said to have brought in 2_l._ worth of rubber. In return for this labour, or imposition, they had received goods which cost certainly under 1_s._, and whose local valuation came to 45 rods (1_s._ 10_d._). As this process repeats itself twenty-six times a-year, it will be seen that they would have yielded 52_l._ in kind at the end of the year to the local factory, and would have received in return some 24_s._ or 25_s._ worth of goods, which had a market value on the spot of 2_l._ 7_s._ 8_d._ In addition to these formal payments they were liable at times to be dealt with in another manner, for should their work, which might have been just as hard, have proved less profitable in its yield of rubber, the local prison would have seen them. The people everywhere assured me that they were not happy under this system, and it was apparent to a callous eye that in this they spoke the strict truth.

In September I visited a native village called D**, situated some miles from the A.B.I.R. factory at Bongandanga. I went there to see one of the natives, who, with his wife and little children, had come to visit me. My going to his town was solely a friendly visit to this man’s household, since I was told that he was an excellent character, and one who set a good example to his countrymen. On the way, at some 4 or 5 miles only from the A.B.I.R. factory, I passed through a part of D** (which is a very long town) where were several sentries of the A.B.I.R. Society. One of these had a 6-chamber revolver loaded with six 4·50 Ely cartridges--doubtless given, like the shot-gun at A**, for intimidation rather than for actual use. Another sentry present had only his cap-gun. He said there were in this one village six sentries of the A.B.I.R., but that the other four had just gone into Bongandanga guarding some prisoners. These were, it was explained to me, some of the natives of the country side who had not brought in what was thought to be a sufficiency of india-rubber. A little further on I met two more sentries of the A.B.I.R. in this town. Coming home from D** by another road I found two other sentries apparently acting as judges and settling a “palaver” among the natives, this being one of the commonest uses to which these men put their authority in their own interest, levying blackmail and interfering in the domestic concerns of the natives by compelling payment for their “judicial” decisions.

The following day my host at D** came in to say that the sentries were making trouble with him on account of my visit of the previous day, declaring that they would inform the agent of the A.B.I.R. that he and others had told me lies about their treatment by that Company, and that they would all be put in the prison gang and sent away out of their country. That evening C E spoke to me of my visit to D** of the previous day, assuring me that the natives were all liars and rogues. The fact that I had personally gone to see a native community, theoretically as free as I was myself, and that I had spoken at first hand to some of these natives themselves, caused, I could not but perceive, considerable annoyance.

That the fears of my native host were not entirely groundless I subsequently learned by letter from Bongandanga, wherein I was informed that two of his wives and one of the children I had seen had fled in the middle of the night for refuge to the Mission evangelist--the sentries quartered at D** having arrested my friend at midnight, and that he had been brought in a prisoner to the A.B.I.R. factory.

As to the condition of the men who paid by detention in the “maison des otages” their shortcomings in respect of rubber, I was assured by the local agent that they were not badly treated and that “they got their food.” On the other hand, I was assured in many quarters that flogging with the chicotte--or hippopotamus-hide whip--was one of the measures used in dealing with refractory natives in that institution. I was told that men have frequently been seen coming away from the factory, after the rubber markets, who had been flogged, and that on two occasions this year, the last of them in March, two natives had been so severely flogged that they were being carried away by their friends.

The A.B.I.R. Society effectually controls the movements of the natives both by water as well as by land. Since almost every village in the Concession is under control, its male inhabitants are entered in books, and according to age and strength have to furnish rubber or, in the villages close to the factory, food-stuffs, such as antelope meat or wild pig (which the elders are required to hunt), as also the customary kwanga bread, or bananas, and fowls and ducks. An agent showed me some of these village lists, during the purchasing of the rubber, of the 242 E** men, explaining that the impositions against the individuals named are fixed by the Government, and are calculated on the bodily service each man owes it, but from which he is exempted in the Concession in order to work rubber and assist the progressive development of the A.B.I.R. Company’s territory. He added that it was not the few guns he disposed of at F** which compelled obedience to this law, but the power of the Congo State “Force Publique,” which, if a village absolutely refuses obedience, would be sent to punish the district to compel respect to these civilized rights. He added that, as the punishment inflicted in these cases was terribly severe, it was better that the milder measures and the other expedients he was forced to resort to should not be interfered with. These measures, he said, involved frequent imprisonment of individuals in his local “house of hostages.” A truly recalcitrant man, he said, who proved enduringly obstinate in his failure to bring in his allotted share of rubber, would in the end be brought to reason by these means. He would find, I was assured, as a result of his perversity that the whole of his time must be spent either in the prison or else in being marched under guard between it and his native town. Terms of fifteen days, from “market” day to “market” day, were the usual period of detention, and generally proved sufficient--during which time the prisoners worked around the factory--but longer periods were not at all unknown. My informant added that an excellent project for dealing with obstinate opponents to the rubber industry had recently been mooted, but had not been carried into practice. This was to transport to the Upper Lopori, or the Upper Maringa, far from their homes and tribes, such men as could not be reclaimed by milder methods. In these distant regions they would have no chance of running away, but would be kept under constant guard and at constant work. This proposal had, however, been disapproved of by the local authorities. In one town I visited, the Chief and some thirty people gave me the names of several men of the town who had, about eighteen months previously, been transported in this manner to G**, an A.B.I.R. post, some 340 miles by water from Bongandanga. Three, whose names were stated, had already died, only two had returned, the others being still detained.

Deaths even in the local prison are not, however, unknown. I heard of several. The late Chief of H**, a town I visited with the agent of the A.B.I.R. station had died some months before as the result, it was said, of imprisonment. He had been arrested because another man of the town had not brought in antelope meat when required. After one and a-half months’ imprisonment the Chief was released. He was then so weak that he could not walk the 2 miles home to H**, but collapsed on the way and died early the following morning. This was on the 14th June last.

On the [blank space in text] September a man named T came to see me. He had been very badly wounded in the thigh, and walked with difficulty. He stated that a sentry of the A.B.I.R., a man named U, had shot him, as I saw; and at the same time had killed V, a friend. The sentries had come to arrest the Chief of H** on account of meat, which was short for the white man--not the present white man, but another--and his people had gathered around the Chief to protect him. An inquiry I gathered had been held by a Law Officer into this and other outrages committed the previous year, and as a result the sentry U had been removed from the district. T went on to say to me that this sentry was now back in the country at large, and a free man. When I asked him if he himself had not been compensated for the injuries entailing partial disablement he had received, he said: “Four months ago I was arrested for not having got meat, and was kept one and a-half months in prison on that account. U, who killed V, and shot me here in the thigh, is a free man, as all men know; but I, who am wounded, have to hunt meat.”

This statement I found on fuller inquiry in other quarters was confirmed; and it became apparent that while the murderer was at large, one of those he had seriously injured, and almost incapacitated, was still required to hunt game, and paid for his failure by imprisonment. On further inquiry, I gathered that this occasion was the only one locally known when a qualified Law Officer had ever visited the Lopori, although charges from that region involving very grave accusations had, on several occasions, been preferred. There being no Magistrate resident in the whole of the A.B.I.R. Concession, inquiries, unless conducted by the agents of the A.B.I.R. themselves, have to be investigated at Coquilhatville--distant fully 270 miles from Bongandanga, and over 400 miles from some parts of the Concession.

It is true an officer of the Congo Executive is deputed to exercise a qualified surveillance within this Concession; but he is not a qualified Magistrate or legally empowered to act as such.

The occupant of this post is a military officer of inferior rank, who is quartered, with a force of soldiers, near to Bassankusu, the chief station of the A.B.I.R. Company.

This officer, when he enters the A.B.I.R. territory, is accompanied by soldiers, and his actions would appear to be generally confined to measures of a punitive kind, the necessity for such measures being that which almost everywhere applies--namely, a refusal of or falling off in the supplies of india-rubber.

At the date of my visit to the Lopori he was engaged in a journey, not unconnected with fighting, to the Maringa River. His independence is not complete, nor is his disassociation from the A.B.I.R. Company’s agencies as marked as, in view of the circumstances attending the collection of rubber, it should be.

His journeys up the two great rivers, the Maringa and Lopori, which drain the A.B.I.R. territory, are made on the steamers of that Company, and he is, to all intents, a guest of the Company’s agents.

The supervision of this officer extends also over the course of the Lulongo river, outside the A.B.I.R. Concession, and he it was who had occupied the town of Z* on an occasion some months before my visit, when two native men had been killed.

The Commissaire-Général of the Equator District has also, at recent periods, visited the A.B.I.R. Concession, but this officer, although the Chief of the Executive and the President of the Territorial Court of the entire district, came as a visitor to the A.B.I.R. stations and as guest on the steamer of that Company.

No steamer belonging to the Congo Government regularly ascends either the Lopori or Maringa rivers, and the conveyance of mails from the A.B.I.R. territory depends, for steamer transport, on the two vessels of that Company.

On the 15th June last, the Director of this Company by letter informed the Missions of Bongandanga and Baringa that he had given orders to the steamers of the Company to refuse the carriage of any letters or correspondence coming from or intended for either of those Mission stations, which are the only European establishments, not belonging to the A.B.I.R. Company, existing within the limits of the Concession.

Resulting from this order the missionaries at these two isolated posts are now compelled, save when, some three times a year, the Mission steamer visits them, to dispatch all their correspondence by canoes to their agent at Tkau, lying just outside the Concession.

This involves the engagement of paddlers and a canoe journey of 120 to 130 miles from each of these Missions down to Tkau.

But as the A.B.I.R. Company claims a right to interrogate all canoes passing up or down stream, this mode of transport leaves some elements of insecurity, apart from the delay and inconvenience otherwise entailed.

At the date of my visit to the Concession, the Mission at Baringa, situated 120 miles up the Maringa river, had despatched a canoe manned by native dependents with mails intended for the outer world--the nearest post office being at Coquilhatville, some 260 miles distant.

When seeking to pass the A.B.I.R. station at Waka, situated half-way down the Maringa river, this canoe was required by the European agent there to land and to deliver to him its correspondence.

The native canoe men reported that this agent had opened the packet and questioned them, and that the letters intrusted to them for delivery to the Mission representative at Tkau were not restored to them without delay and much inconvenience.

It might not be too much to expect that, in return for the very extensive privileges it enjoys of exploitation of public lands and a large native population, the A.B.I.R. Company should be required, in the entire absence of the public flotilla, to discharge the not onerous task of conveying the public mails by its steamers which so frequently navigate the waterways of the Concession in the collection of india-rubber.

Were a qualified Magistrate appointed to reside within the limits of this Concession--as within the other Upper Congo Concessions, some of them territories as large as a European State, and still containing a numerous native population--the public service could not but be the gainer.

As it is to-day, no Court is open to the appeals of these people that lies at all within their reach, and no European agency, save isolated Mission stations, has any direct influence upon them except that immediately interested in their profitable exploitation.

It is only right to say that the present agent of the A.B.I.R. Society I met at Bongandanga seemed to me to try, in very difficult and embarrassing circumstances, to minimize as far as possible, and within the limits of his duties, the evils of the system I there observed at work.

The requisitions of food-stuffs laid on the villages adjoining the factories were said to be less onerous than those affecting the rubber towns. They rested, I was informed, on the same legal basis as that authorizing rubber working, and a failure to meet them involved the same desultory modes of arrest and imprisonment. During my stay at Bongandanga several instances of arrest in failures of this kind came to my notice.

On a Sunday in August, I saw six of the local sentries going back with cap-guns and ammunition pouches to E**, after the previous day’s market, and later in the day, when in the factory grounds, two armed sentries came up to the agent as we walked, guarding sixteen natives, five men tied neck by neck, with five untied women and six young children. This somewhat embarrassing situation, it was explained to me, was due to the persistent failure of the people of the village these persons came from to supply its proper quota of food. These people, I was told, had just been captured “on the river” by one of the sentries placed there to watch the waterway. They had been proceeding in their canoes to some native fishing grounds, and were espied and brought in. I asked if the children also were held responsible for food supplies, and they, along with an elderly woman, were released, and told to run over to the Mission, and go to school there. This they did not do, but doubtless returned to their homes in the recalcitrant village. The remaining five men and four women were led off to the “maison des otages” under guard of the sentry.

An agent explained that he was forced to catch women in preference to the men as then supplies were brought in quicker; but he did not explain how the children deprived of their parents obtained their own food supplies.

He deplored this hard necessity, but he said the vital needs of his own station, as well as of the local missionaries, who, being guests of the A.B.I.R. Society, had to be provided for, sternly imposed it upon him if the peopled failed to keep up their proper supplies.

While we thus talked an armed sentry came along guarding four natives--men--who were carrying bunches of bananas, a part of another food imposition. This sentry explained to his master that the village he had just visited had failed to give antelope meat, alleging the very heavy rain of the previous night as an excuse for not hunting.

The agent apologized to me for his inability to give me meat during my stay, pointing out the obvious necessity he now was under of catching some persons without delay. He should certainly, he said, have to send out and catch women that very night.

On leaving the A.B.I.R. grounds, still accompanied by this gentleman, another batch of men carrying food supplies were marched in by three armed guards, and were conducted towards the “maison des otages,” which two other sentries apparently guarded.

At 8 P.M. that evening, just after the Sunday service, a number of women were taken through the Mission grounds past the church by the A.B.I.R. sentries, and in the morning I was told that three such seizures had been effected during the night. On the 2nd September I met, when walking in the A.B.I.R. grounds with the subordinate agent of the factory, a file of fifteen women, under the guard of three unarmed sentries, who were being brought in from the adjoining villages, and were led past me. These women, who were evidently wives and mothers, it was explained in answer to my inquiry, had been seized in order to compel their husbands to bring in antelope or other meat which was overdue, and some of which it was very kindly promised should be sent on board my steamer when leaving. As a matter of fact, half an antelope was so sent on board by the good offices of this gentleman.

As I was leaving Bongandanga, on the 3rd September, several elderly Headmen of the neighbouring villages were putting off in their canoes to the opposite forest, to get meat wherewith to redeem their wives, whom I had seen arrested the previous day. I learned later that the husband of one of these women brought in, two days afterwards, to the Mission-station, his infant daughter, who, being deprived of her mother, had fallen seriously ill, and whom he could not feed. At the request of the missionary this woman was released on the 5th September. I took occasion to say to the agent of the A.B.I.R. Company, before leaving, that the practice of imprisoning women for impositions said to be due by their husbands was to my mind unquestionably illegal, and that I should not fail to draw the attention of the Governor-General of the Congo State to what I had seen. The excuse offered, both on this occasion as on others when I had ventured to allude to the condition of the natives around Bongandanga, was that the station compared most favourably with all others within the A.B.I.R. Concession, which were run, I was assured, on much sterner lines than those which caused me pain at Bongandanga. I later made official communication to the local Government at Boma on these points, in so far as the system I had seen at work affected the English missionaries within the A.B.I.R. Concession, and in that letter I sought to show that neither the local agent nor his subordinate were responsible for a state of affairs which greatly wounded the feelings of my countrymen at Bongandanga, and which had filled me with a pained surprise. My attention, it was true, had been drawn to the systematic imprisonment of women in parts of the Upper Congo some two years previously, in a case wherein a British coloured subject--a native of Lagos--along with three Europeans, all of them in the service of the Compagnie Anversoise du Commerce au Congo--a Concession Company--had been charged with various acts of cruelty and oppression which had caused much loss of life to the natives in the Mongala region. These men had been arrested by the authorities in the summer of 1900, and had been sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, against which they had made appeal. The facts charged against the British coloured subject (who sought my help) were, among others, that he had illegally arrested women and kept them in illegal detention at his trading station, and it was alleged that many of these women had died of starvation while thus confined. This man himself, when I had visited him in Boma gaol in March 1901, said that more than 100 women and children had died of starvation at his hands, but that the responsibility for both their arrest and his own lack of food to give them was due to his superiors’ orders and neglect. The Court of Appeal at Boma gave final Judgment in the case on the 13th February, 1901; and in connection with the Lagos man’s degree of guilt, a copy of this Judgment, in so far as it affected him, at my request had been communicated to me by the Governor-General. From this Judgment I learned that the case against the accused had been clearly proved. Among other extenuating circumstances, which secured, however, a marked reduction of the first sentence imposed on the coloured man, the Court of Appeal cited the following:--