Some of the axes and knives are decorated with a kind of scroll work. This is wrought in iron with graceful lines and curves, showing considerable artistic taste on the part of the native workmen.
The most deadly of all weapons used by the Fans is a small, insignificant-looking rod of bamboo. It is not more than a foot long, and is simply sharpened at one end. This is the famous poison arrow, a single pin's point prick of which means death. The poison for these arrows is obtained from the sap of a plant which grows in the forests. The point of each arrow is carefully dipped several times in the sap and allowed to dry, when it turns a red color.
These arrows are carried in a small bag made from the skin of some wild beast. They are much dreaded by the tribes at war with the Fans, for they can be thrown with great force at a distance of fifteen feet, and with such velocity that they cannot be evaded. There is no possible cure for a wound inflicted by one of these deadly yet harmless-looking missiles. Death soon follows in its wake.
In addition to skill in iron work, the Fans show considerable ingenuity in making vessels of clay. These they make surprisingly regular in shape, considering that they have no lathe, like ordinary potters.
Just beyond the low coasts above the delta of the Ogowé lies the hilly, thickly wooded shore of Loango. Here oil palms, gum trees, copper, ivory, coffee, cotton, and bananas are found in abundance.
The great river Congo, or Zaire, forms a line of division across West Africa; and the coast lands south of this line are very different from those which lie north of it.
In place of the lagoons and swamps, backed by evergreen forests, which lie north of the great river, level sandy bays appear along the shores farther south, and the forest vegetation is more distant from the coast; so that only long stretches of coarse grass, with here and there a tall tree, are seen from the ocean.
Behind the coast plain, however, the land rises in terraces, each of which is marked by a change of vegetation, from the first, with its larger shady trees and broad-leaved grasses, to the second, in which creeping plants abound, clasping the biggest trees with a mass of foliage and flowers, up to the third, where the plains are covered with gigantic grasses. Each of these changes of level corresponds to a change of climate, from the hot coast land up to the cool interior.
Here, in the Congo State, under the rule of the King of the Belgians, we find Banana Point, Boma, Vivi, names familiar to us in our reading of the Congo River district. Higher up the river, we find Leopoldville, on Stanley Pool, the principal station amongst the many that dot the river along this part of its course.
All the country for a great distance south of the river was once subject to the king of Congo, from whose dominion the river is named; his capital became the center from which the early Jesuit missionaries spread cultivation and industry far and wide.