Richard Harding Davis

“ And yet, for twenty-five years these statesmen have watched Leopold disobey every provision in the act of the conference. Were they to visit the Congo, they could see for themselves the jungle creeping in and burying their trading posts, their great factories turned into barracks. They know that the blacks they mutually agreed to protect have been reduced to slavery worse than that they suffered from the Arabs, that hundreds of thousands of them have fled from the Congo, and that those that remain have been mutilated, maimed, or, what was more merciful, murdered. ”

“ The man to blame for the atrocities, for each separate atrocity, is Leopold. Had he shaken his head they would have ceased. When the hue and cry in Europe grew too hot for him and he held up his hand they did cease. At least along the main waterways. Years before he could have stopped them. But these were the seven fallow years, when millions of tons of red rubber were being dumped upon the wharf at Antwerp; little, roughly rolled red balls, like pellets of coagulated blood, which had cost their weight in blood, which would pay Leopold their weight in gold. ”

“ They observed the gilded glory of the Kanzlar smoking-room, its mirrors and marble-topped tables, with the satisfaction and awe of the California miner, who found all the elegance of civilization in the red plush of a Broadway omnibus. The boy-commander of the gunboat gazed at white women in the saloon with fascinated admiration.
"I have never," he declared, breathlessly, "I have never seen so many beautiful women in one place at the same time! I'd forgotten that there were so many white people in the world." ”

“ On the contrary, these Americans go as far out of their way as Belgium to make a partner of the man who has wrung his money from wretched slaves, who were beaten, starved, and driven in chains. This concession cannot make them rich. It can only make them richer. And not richer in fact, for all the money they may whip out of the Congo could not give them one thing that they cannot now command, not an extra taste to the lips, not a fresh sensation, not one added power for good. ”

“ For the charm of Zanzibar lies in the fact that while the white men have made it healthy and clean, have given it good roads, good laws, protection for the slaves, quick punishment for the slave-dealers, and a firm government under a benign [211] and gentle Sultan, they have done all of this without destroying one flash of its local color, or one throb of its barbaric life, which is the showy, sunshiny, and sumptuous life of the Far East. ”

“ As we have seen, to kings, to chartered "Merchant Adventurers," to the cotton planters of the West Indies and of our South, and to the men of the North who traded in black ivory, the West Coast gave vast fortunes. The price was the lives of millions of slaves. And to-day it almost seems as though the sins of the fathers were being visited upon the children; as though the juju of the African, under the spell of which his enemies languish and die, has been cast upon the white man. We have to look only at home. ”

“ To exist beautifully for twenty-four hundred years without a single mésalliance, without having once stooped to trade, is certainly a strong title to nobility. Other animals by contact with man have become degraded. The lion, the "King of Beasts," now rides a bicycle, and growls, as previously rehearsed, at the young woman in spangles, of whom he is secretly afraid. And the elephant, the monarch of the jungle, and of a family as ancient and noble as that of the hippopotamus, the monarch of the river, has become a beast of burden and works for his living. ”

“ Close to the surf runs an avenue bordered by giant cocoanut palms and, after the sun is down, this is the fashionable promenade. Here every evening may be seen in their freshest linen the six married white men of Libreville, and, in the latest Paris frocks, the six married ladies, while from the verandas of the factories that line the sea front and from under the paper lanterns of the Café Guion the clerks and traders sip their absinthe and play dominoes, and cast envious glances at the six fortunate fellow exiles. ”

“ Why should men as rich as these elect to go into partnership with one who sweats his dollars out of the naked black? How really fine, how really wonderful it would be if these same men, working together, decided to set free these twenty million people—if, [112] instead of joining hands with Leopold, they would overthrow him and march into the Congo free men, without his chain around their ankles, and open it to the trade of the world, and give justice and a right to live and to work and to sell and buy to millions of miserable human beings. These Americans working together could do it. ”

“ The agent knows that Leopold, King of the Belgians, knows, and that he has shared that knowledge with the agent's employer, the man who by bribes of rich bonuses incites him to crime, the man who could throw him into a Belgian jail, Leopold, King of the Congo.
The agent decides for him it is best to please both Leopolds, and Leopold makes no secret of what best pleases him. For not only is he responsible for the atrocities, in that he does not try to suppress them, but he is doubly guilty in that he has encouraged them. ”

“ A week later I was again in Boma, waiting for the Nigeria to take me back to Liverpool.
Before returning to the West Coast and leaving the subject of the Congo, I wish to testify to what seemed to me the enormously important work that is being done by the missionaries. I am not always an admirer of the missionary. Some of those one meets in China and Japan seem to be taking much more interest in their own bodies than in the souls of others. But, in the Congo, almost the only people who are working in behalf of the natives are those attached to the missions. ”

“ It is a country where the pay is cruelly inadequate, where but few horses, sheep, or cattle can exist, where the natives are unbelievably lazy and insolent, and where, while there is no society of congenial spirits, there is a superabundance of animal and insect pests. Still, so great are gold, ivory, and rubber, and so many are the men who will take big chances [14] for little pay, that every foot of the West Coast is preëmpted. As the ship rolls along, for hours from the rail you see miles and miles of steaming yellow sand and misty swamp where as yet no white man has set his foot. ”

“ Instead, now, we are going down to the sea in ships with the vortrekkers of civilization, those who are making the ways straight; who, in a few weeks, will be leaving us to lose themselves in great forests, who clear the paths of noisome jungles where the sun seldom penetrates, who sit in sun-baked "factories," as they call their trading houses, [7] measuring life by steamer days, who preach the Gospel to the cannibals of the Congo, whose voices are the voices of those calling in the wilderness. ”

“ But on our way up the Congo, until we turned into the Kasai River, we saw none.
So, on the first night we camped in the Kasai I had begun to think I never would see one, and I went ashore both skeptical and discouraged. We had stopped, not at a wood post, but at a place on the river's bank previously [122] untouched by man, where there was a stretch of beach, and then a higher level with trees and tall grasses. Driven deep in this beach were the footprints of a large elephant. They looked as though some one had amused himself by sinking a bucket in the mud, and then pulling it out. ”

“ The fact that the people of the United States possessed no "vested interest" in the Congo was the important fact that placed any action on our part in behalf of that distressed country above suspicion. If we acted, we did so because the United States, as one of the signatory Powers of the Berlin Act, had promised to protect the natives of the Congo; and we could truly claim that we acted only in the name of humanity. Leopold has now robbed us of that claim. He hopes that the enormous power wielded by the Americans with whom he is associated, will prevent any action against him in this country. ”

“ One-half of the Street Cleaning Department of Mozambique.
In the swamps of the East Coast the white exiles lay aside the cloaks and masks of crowded cities. They do not try to conceal their feelings, their vices, or their longings. They talk to the first white stranger they meet of things which in the great cities a man conceals even from his room-mate, and men they would not care to know, and whom they would never meet in the fixed social pathways of civilization, they take to their hearts as friends. They are too few to be particular, they have no choice, and they ask no questions. ”

“ In the heat of the day, which is from sunrise to past sunset, you see no one, you hear no footfall, no voices, no rumble of wheels or stamp of horses' hoofs. The bare feet of the native, who is the only human being who dares to move abroad, makes no sound, and in Mozambique there are no carriages and no horses. ”

“ In the care in which it is laid out, in the excellence of its sanitary arrangements, in its cleanliness, and in the magnificence of its innumerable official residences, and in their sensible adaptability to the needs of the climate, one might be deceived into believing that Dar Es Salaam is the beautiful gateway of a thriving and busy colony. ”

“ Any one who visits the Congo and remains only two weeks will be convinced that of these charges Leopold is guilty. In that time he will not see atrocities, but he will see that the natives are slaves, that no foreigner can trade with them, that in the interest of Leopold alone the country is milked.
He will see that the government of Leopold is not a government. It preserves the perquisites and outward signs of government. It coins money, issues stamps, collects taxes. But it assumes none of the responsibilities of government. The Congo Free State is only a great trading house. ”

“ The surf and the fever are the Minotaurs of the West Coast, and in the year there is not a day passes that they do not claim and receive their tribute in merchandise and human life. Said an old Coaster to me, pointing at the [13] harbor of Grand Bassam: "I've seen just as much cargo lost overboard in that surf as I've seen shipped to Europe." One constantly wonders how the Coasters find it good enough. How, since 1550, when the Portuguese began trading, it has been possible to find men willing to fill the places of those who died. ”

“ It is the busiest, and the brightest and richest in color of all the ports along the East African coast. Were it not for its narrow streets and its towering walls it would be a place of perpetual sunshine. Everybody is either actively busy, or contentedly idle. It is all movement, noise, and glitter, everyone is telling everyone else to make way before him; the Indian merchants beseech you from the open bazaars ”

“ As the Powers finally arranged it, the map of the West Coast is like a mosaic, like the edge of a badly constructed patchwork quilt. In trading along the West Coast a man can find use for five European languages, and he can use a new one at each port of call. ”

“ In a canoe naked natives paddle alongside to sell fish; a peevish little man in a sun hat, who, in order to save Leopold three salaries, holds four port offices, is being rowed to the gangway; on shore the only other visible inhabitant of Banana, a man with no nerves, is disturbing the brooding, sweating silence by knocking the rust off the plates of a stranded mud-scow. ”

“ Each baby was strapped between the shoulders of the mother. A mammy-chair is like one of those two-seated swings in which people sit facing one another. If to the shoulders of each person in the swing was tied a baby, it is obvious that should the swing bump into anything, the baby would get the worst of it. That is what happened in the mammy-chair. Every time the chair spun around, the head of a baby would come "crack!" against the ship's side. So the babies howled, and no one of the ship's passengers, crowded six deep along the rail, blamed them. ”

“ If he paid the native only six cents for every two pounds, he received a bonus of three cents, the cost to the State being but nine cents per kilo, but, if he paid the natives twelve cents for every two pounds, he received as a bonus less than one cent. In a word, the more rubber the agent collected the more he personally benefited, and if he obtained it "cheaply" or for nothing—that is, by taking hostages, making prisoners, by the whip of hippopotamus hide, by torture—so much greater his fortune, so much richer Leopold. ”

“ If this be so the syndicates are entering upon an experiment which for Americans is almost without precedent. They will be virtually what in England is called a chartered company, with the difference that the Englishmen receive their charter from their own government, while the charter under which the Americans will act will be granted by a foreign Power, and for what they may do in the Congo their own government could not hold them responsible. They are answerable only to the Power that issued the charter; and that Power is the just, the humane, the merciful Leopold. ”