Leaving the Bungundu district we steamed for many miles along a monotonous stretch of forest, and then reached the thickly populated line of Bokomela towns. Selecting the largest we could see, we turned our steamer towards it; and, putting our pretty little vessel along the beach in front of the chosen town, we prepared to go ashore. Through our glasses we had seen the women and children running hurriedly away, and the bustling activity of the men who lined the bank and stood on the trees overhanging the river. Just as we were about to step ashore we noticed that the men lining the bank above us had raised their spears in a very threatening attitude, and the old men on the trees had fitted their arrows to their bows ready to shoot at us. We recognized that we were in a tight corner; we wondered where the spears and arrows would strike us. A false movement would have been misunderstood, and a shower of sharp weapons would have been the result. Our pulses raced tumultuously, our hearts seemed to thump our ribs; but outwardly we were calm and self-possessed. We did not know until months later how near we were to a horrible catastrophe—to being, in fact, the principal dishes at a cannibal feast.
In the best “trade language” we could muster we told the excited savages who and what we were. “Go away,” they screamed, “or we will kill you. We want nothing to do with you white men.”
We tried to explain the purpose of our visit, and asked them to let the Bungundu men land and talk with them. And all the time we were standing unarmed within twenty feet of their upraised spears. There was a deadly silence on the little steamer, and the crew had taken refuge behind any and every thing that offered protection from those murderous lances and arrows.
“Go away,” they shouted more fiercely; “we will kill the men if they come ashore, and all of you afterwards. We’ll have nothing to do with white men.” And in frantic unison the excited mob took up the cry of their head-men.
There was nothing for it but to push off our steamer and leave the place. It was not until we were beyond the reach of their arrows that we breathed freely, and then fully realizing the whole meaning of the incident, and its possibilities of death to us and disaster to our plans, we bowed our heads in prayerful thanks to God for His protecting care.
Some months after our establishment at Monsembe, I went down to those districts in a canoe paddled by a few lads; and those same Bokomela people, hearing, from the song of the lads, that one of the Monsembe white men was approaching, hurried out in their canoes with fowls in their hands as tokens of their good-will, and begged me to go ashore. What was the reason for this strange and pleasant change respecting us? It was this: In the meantime they had heard of our peaceable lives and intentions; of our straightforward and honest dealings with the natives about us; that we neither stole things ourselves, nor allowed our people to steal; but always bought what we wanted at a proper market value. These facts coming to their knowledge had entirely altered their attitude towards us, and had turned former enemies into would-be friends.
On going ashore they gave me a most cordial welcome, and when quietness had been restored, I said: “Some months ago we came to you on our little steamer, and you drove us away with murderous threats of spearing us. Why was that? We were quiet, peaceable men; why were you in such a rage?”
An oldish man, sitting quietly on a stool near by, arose and said: “White man, just before you came to us on your steamer, the white men on a passing steamer shot our chief and some of our people for no reason at all. Shot them down while standing quietly on the bank, and for that reason we swore to kill the next white men that came our way, and you were the next to come.”
Undoubtedly they would have had their revenge upon us but that God placed His hand over theirs, so that neither spear nor arrow was hurled at us. More than once or twice have we seen the spears poised ready for the throw; and every time we have found that some cowardly, dastardly white men had been before us and, having shot down the natives for no reason whatever, had gone off and left the next unsuspecting white men who went that way to bear the brunt of the natives’ mad, but excusable, desire for revenge. Legacies of hatred have been unfortunately left by too many white men among savage peoples, who regard all white folk as belonging to one tribe, and as one or more of their kinsmen have been murdered by white men, then to retaliate by killing other white men will, they think, balance the account.
As illustrative of the preceding remarks the following unvarnished story is unfortunately too à propos: A State steamer in 1890 was proceeding up a tributary of the Congo, and on its upper deck two white officers were sitting holding a discussion on marksmanship, when they saw, at some distance in front of them, a native standing in his canoe paddling it from one side to the other of the river. The two officers instantly made a bet as to which of them could knock the man over. Guns were raised and fired, and Captain X. brought down the poor unsuspecting wretch and pocketed the stakes;[[4]] but he left a heritage of hate that has lasted to this day, if there are still alive in that district any relatives of the murdered man, or witnesses of the foul murder.