[Illustration: Headdress of Kongo Women.]
The men spend a great deal of time in fishing. They also hunt and kill elephants to get their tusks for ivory. There are many elephants in the Kongo Valley. They roam about in large herds. It must be a hard task to kill an elephant!
One of the tribes in the Kongo Valley is called the Bangala tribe. The men are tall and strong and fierce. They are always fighting with other tribes. This makes the other tribes very much afraid of them.
The negroes of this tribe have a strange way of making friends with a white man. They will do him no harm if he is willing to be their "blood brother."
This is the way they make a white man their blood brother. The black man takes a limb of palm tree which has two branches. With one branch in his hand, he falls on the ground before the white man. The white man takes hold of the other branch. Then the black man splits the limb into two parts with his knife.
After this is done, an old man of the tribe comes to the white man and the black man. He puts the white man's arm over the black man's arm. When their arms are together, he makes a small cut in each arm. He makes this cut to draw blood. Then the old man puts salt and the dust of banana leaves into the blood, and rubs both arms together. The black man and the white man are then blood brothers.
These people have also a strange way of taking care of their canoes. When they are not using them, they keep them under water. They say that the canoes will last longer if kept under water.
THE AMAZON VALLEY.
Perhaps you have heard of the Amazon River. It is the largest river in the world. It is four thousand miles long, and more than fifty miles wide where it flows into the sea. This river is in Brazil. Brazil is far south of us.