After our day in the field—for frequently we took our lunch with us—we returned before sunset and bathed and dressed for dinner. In the Congo only a madman would take a cold plunge. The most healthful immersion is in tepid water. More than one Englishman has paid the penalty with his life, by continuing his traditional cold bath in the tropics. This reminds me of a significant fact in connection with colonization. Everyone must admit that the Briton is the best colonizer in the world. One reason is that he knows how to rule the man of colour for he does it with fairness and firmness. Another lies in the fact that he not only keeps himself clean but he makes his environment sanitary.
There is a tradition that the Constitution follows the flag. I contend that with the Englishman the bath-tub precedes the code of law and what is more important, it is in daily use. There are a good many bath-tubs in the Congo but they are employed principally as receptacles for food supplies and soiled linen.
Those evenings at Alberta were as unforgettable as their setting. Braham and Wallace were not only men of the world but they had read extensively and had travelled much. A wide range of subjects came under discussion at that hospitable table whose spotless linen and soft shaded lights were more reminiscent of London and New York than suggestive of a far-away post on the Congo River on the edge of the wilderness.
At Alberta as elsewhere, the "H. C. B." is a moral force. Each area has a doctor and a hospital. No detail of its medical work is more vital to the productive life of the Colony that the inoculation of the natives against sleeping sickness. This dread disease is the scourge of the Congo and every year takes toll of hundreds of thousands of natives. Nor is the white man immune. I saw a Belgian official dying of this loathsome malady in a hospital at Matadi and I shall never forget his ravings. The last stage of the illness is always a period when the victim becomes demented. The greatest boon that could possibly be held out for Central Africa today would be the prevention of sleeping sickness.
Another constructive work carried out under the auspices of the "H. C. B." is embodied in the native schools. There is an excellent one at Alberta. It is conducted by the Catholic Fathers of the Scheut Mission. The children are trained to become wood-workers, machinists, painters, and carpenters. It is the Booker Washington idea transplanted in the jungle. The Scheut Missionaries and their Jesuit colleagues are doing an admirable service throughout the Congo. Some of them are infused with the spirit that animated Father Damien. Time, distance, and isolation count for naught with them. It is no uncommon thing to encounter in the bush a Catholic priest who has been on continuous service there for fifteen or twenty years without a holiday. At Luluaburg lives a Mother Superior who has been in the field for a quarter of a century without wandering more than two hundred miles from her field of operations.
V
Now for the last stage of the Congo River trip. Like so many of my other experiences in Africa it produced a surprise. One morning when we were about two hundred miles north of Kinshassa I heard the whir of a motor engine, a rare sound in those parts. I thought of aeroplanes and instinctively looked up. Flying overhead toward Coquilhatville was a 300-horse power hydroplane containing two people. Upon inquiry I discovered that it was one of four machines engaged in carrying passengers, mail, and express between Kinshassa and Coquilhatville.
The campaign against the Germans in East Africa proved the practicability of aeroplanes in the tropics. The Congo is the first of the Central African countries to dedicate aviation to commercial uses and this precedent is likely to be extensively followed. Fifteen hydroplanes have been ordered for the Congo River service which will eventually be extended to Stanleyville. Only those who have endured the agony of slow transport in the Congo can realize the blessing that air travel will confer.
A TYPICAL OIL PALM FOREST