THE "PEACE" SURPRISING A PARTY OF FISHERWOMEN ON THE RUKI RIVER.
Geographical information imparted by the natives was apt to be wholly incorrect. They had ready answers for all questions, but if they imagined Grenfell would like to hear of a lake a little inland, or five days more of navigation up the river, they would make replies which they thought would please him, regardless of truth. This is a widespread practice among savages. At the same time they were often eager to learn of his discoveries. They would ask him how many days' journey his vessel made above their village, and whether the natives he met dealt in ivory and slaves. Some tribes had not the slightest idea that ivory had any value, and thought it strange that any man should have occasion to buy wood. Some of them had no names for the rivers where they live. They were children of the earth, they said, and if he wished to know the names of the rivers he must ask the children of the water. The southern tributaries—Bussera, Chuapa, and Lulonga—are in the great belt of dense Congo forest, and in the upper reaches of the rivers the big branches form a complete roof over the streams, which are in deep shadow even on the brightest days; and in this roof Grenfell found some of his most persistent enemies. They were the little folks of Africa, the pygmies, who would clamber out on the branches overhanging the streams, and shoot their poisoned arrows into the wooden covering of the vessel.
It was Grenfell who gave us our first positive information of the many dwarfs who live in the forest south of the Congo, though about the same time other explorers discovered them further south. One evening a canoe drew up at some distance from the Peace, and when the interpreter asked the natives who they were they said they were Batwa. This is the name of the dwarfs living in the southern Congo forests, and Grenfell and Von François were overjoyed at the prospect of seeing them. It was now so dark that they could not determine what the canoemen looked like, but in the morning they found near by a cluster of huts inhabited by these little people, and then they knew they were in the land of the pygmies. Grenfell found many dwarfs on the Lomami, Chuapa, and Bussera rivers, and they proved to be the most troublesome and vindictive people with whom he had to deal. His black crew were badly frightened when they heard the dwarfs were near. All their lives they had been told that the dwarfs were most unpleasant people to meet. It was common report that they shot with poisoned arrows, permitted no one to live in their country, and excelled all warriors and hunters in skill with the bow and spear. We shall see later what Grenfell and other explorers have learned about these strange and interesting people, and also about the cannibals who are spread so widely over the Congo basin. Very little was known of the cannibals as long as explorers kept to the main river, but after Grenfell began his work along the tributaries the world soon came to know the appalling extent of this evil.
Nearly all the tribes discovered by Grenfell are cannibals. An interpreter whom he took with him from the Congo was in constant fear of being captured and eaten, and he would never venture ashore except in company with six or eight comrades: "You eat goats and hens," said some natives to Grenfell one day, "because you are rich and able to buy them; but we are poor, and have to eat men, whom we can get for nothing." Under the laws of the Congo State it is now a capital crime to eat human flesh. Wherever the influence of the white man extends, the practice is being discontinued, and some day this stigma upon human nature will disappear from all the parts of Africa where it has so long prevailed.
There are missionary stations now in some parts of the large regions that Grenfell traversed. His peaceful and friendly methods made it easy for other white men to go among the people he brought to light. The natives who sought to kill him are now glad to sell ivory and rubber to traders. His discoveries during fifteen months added about one thousand eight hundred miles to the known navigable waters of the Congo basin. No one except Stanley has surpassed him in the extent and value of his work among the waterways of the second largest river system in the world.