Perhaps the home life of the Congo folk may be best depicted if some familiar scenes are described.

While engaged in the transport service of the mission, I was sitting quietly in my tent in Sadi Kiandunga’s town, when without the least warning a volley was fired at less than a hundred yards from my little camp. The men shouted, the women screamed, the wildest commotion ensued. Was it an attack upon the town? What had happened? As a man ran past the tent, I inquired the cause.

‘Oh, nothing,’ he said; ‘it is only a baby born, and everyone is glad and shouting out their joy at the safe birth; they have fired a feu-de-joie: don’t you do so in your country?’

The house where the little stranger had arrived was very small; a fire was burning inside, filling it with strong wood smoke; and as if that were not sufficient discomfort for such a time, the house was literally crammed with women, all shouting vociferously, showing in this well-meaning but mistaken manner their sympathy in the mother’s joy.

The people rise at daybreak, and the fire, which has been kept smouldering all night, is replenished, or, if it has gone out, fire is obtained from another household. The wife clears up the ashes from the hearth, and sweeps out the chips and husks that remain from last night’s supper.

The husband, if a tidy man, sweeps his compound. Negro toilet operations then ensue. A calabash of water is taken behind the house, and filling his mouth with water Ndualu (Dom Alvaro) allows a thin stream to flow over his hands as he carefully washes them, also his face; then cleaning his teeth, he goes to sit in front of his house to comb his hair. The ladies have been bestirring themselves, and a snack of food is ready—a few roast ground-nuts, or a piece of prepared cassava.

The infants are placed in the care of older babies, and the women and girls of the town wend their way to the village spring, where they bathe and gossip until all the calabashes being full they return with the day’s supply of water. One calabash is for the baby, who is brought outside, and carefully washed, squalling lustily as the cold douche is poured over him. If the mother is careful, his feet are examined for jiggers. This sand flea, brought from Brazils some twenty years ago, is a great pest. Burrowing into the feet often in the most tender parts, the insect swells until its eggs are mature, when the little cyst bursts, and they are set free. If they are not extracted the jiggers set up an inflammation, which may even terminate in mortification. It is very common to see one or two toes absent from this cause.

The preliminaries of the day being over, the women start for the farms. Taking with them in the great conical basket a hoe, a little food, and a small calabash of water, the baby is carried on the hip, or more often made to straddle its mother’s back, and tied on with a cloth dexterously fastened in front. So the poor child travels often through the hot sun, bound tightly to its mother’s reeking body, its little head but inadequately protected by its incipient wool. No wonder that an African baby who has survived the hardships of babyhood grows up to be strong, and able to bear great strain and fatigue. The weaklings are early weeded out, and often poor mothers, wringing their hands, wail and deplore the loss of the little darling, whose death is due to their own lack of care, rather than to the supposed witchcraft and devilish malice of some one in the town.

The men will sometimes help in the farms when trees have to be felled, but otherwise the women perform the farm work; and as the ground does not need much scratching to produce a crop, the hoeing and weeding afford them healthy employment, sufficient to keep them so far out of mischief. We have seen towns in the neighbourhood of Stanley Pool where the women do no farm work, living on the proceeds of their husband’s ivory trade; they gossip, smoke, sleep, and cook, or spend an hour or two in arranging the coiffure of their lord or of a companion. Laziness is not good for any folk, and where there is so little housework the gardening is not too severe a tax on the women. Towards evening they return, bringing some cabbage or cassava leaves, or something to make up some little relish, and proceed to cook the evening meal. The men have their own departments of work: they are great traders. The Congo week consists of four days; Nkandu, Konzo, Nhenge, Nsona, and every four or eight days they hold their markets. As they have many markets within a moderate distance, and occurring on different days of the week, there is generally a market to attend on each day, if any one is so disposed. The marketplaces are in open country, generally on a hill-top, away from towns. These precautions prevent surprises.

On the appointed day large numbers of men, women, and children are to be met carrying their goods. There is cassava in various forms, dried, in puddings, or as meal; plantain, ground-nuts, and other food-stuffs; pigs, goats, sheep, fowls and fish; dried caterpillars on skewers; dried meat; wares from Europe; cloth, beads, knives, guns, brass wire, salt, gunpowder. Drink in abundance, palm wine, native beer, sometimes gin and rum. Native produce, such as palm oil, ground-nuts, sesamum, india-rubber, crates of fowls, bundles of native cloth, meal sieves, baskets, hoes, etc.

Stringent laws are made to protect these markets. No one is allowed to come armed, no one may catch a debtor on market-day, no one may use a knife against another in a passion. The penalty for all these offences is death, and many muzzles of buried guns stick up in the market places to warn other rowdies against a like fate. Between the coast and Stanley Pool beads are the currency; above the Pool brass rods take their place. A man wishing to sell salt and to buy india-rubber, first sells his salt for beads, and with the beads buys the rubber. Large profits can be made on these markets, and many natives spend the greater part of their time travelling from one to another for the purpose of trade.

Children commence trading very early. A five-year old boy will somehow get three or four strings of beads, and with them will buy a small chicken. After a few months of patient care, it is worth eight or ten strings, and his capital is doubled. He is soon able to buy a small pig, which follows him about like a dog, and sleeps in his house until, by and by, it fetches a good amount on the market. The proceeds of rat hunting, barter among the town boys, and further trade, have meanwhile increased his stock in trade. When he grows older, he accompanies a caravan to the coast, he gets a nice present to carry food for his uncle; en route his ideas of trade are enlarged. He commences to buy india-rubber, and brings back with him next time salt and cloth, a gun and some powder, a knife, and a plate. And so by degrees he is encouraged to fresh effort, until he has sufficient to pay for a wife or two. Continuing still in trade, he buys and sells, investing his property in slave retainers, and hiding some in reserve, in case of misfortune, or against his death. For it is the ambition of all to be buried in a large quantity of cloth. Then the report goes that so and so was buried, and that he was wound in 200 fathoms of cloth, and that 50 guns were buried with him, and so on. This sort of burial is a Congo Westminster Abbey.

The girls help their mothers in farming and housework until they arrive at a marriageable age. In some places they are betrothed very early; the intended husband paying a deposit, and by instalments completing the price demanded by the girl’s maternal relatives. The amount is often heavy—reckoned by Congo wealth—but varies much according to the position of the girl’s family or the suitor’s wealth. It is altogether a business matter. Should the wife die, her maternal relatives have to provide another wife without further payment; and as frequently they have spent the sum paid in the first instance, they are landed in difficulties. Palavers about women are a fruitful source of war.

Children are considered the property of the wife’s relatives, the father has little or no control over them. The right of inheritance is from uncle to nephew, thus a man’s slaves and real property go to the eldest son of his eldest sister, or the next of kin on such lines. A wise nephew will therefore leave his father’s house, and go to live with his uncle, whom he hopes to succeed. His uncle also, knowing that his nephew is to inherit his goods, while his own children belong to his wife’s clan, cares more for his nephew than his own children. The evil of the system is recognized by many, but they cannot see how the necessary revolution is to be brought about.

At the age of five or six the boys do not stay longer with their mothers. Some bigger boys having built a house, the small boys just breaking loose from parental restraints go to them, and beg to be allowed to live with them. They in turn promise to find them in firewood, and to be their little retainers pro tem. These boys’ houses are called mbonge. I turned up late at night (eight o’clock) in a native town, having made a forced march. I had never visited there before, and not liking to rouse the chief at such an hour, I went to the mbonge, and asked the boys whether I and my two attendants might sleep there to save fuss and trouble, as I must be off again at daybreak. ‘Oh, you are Ingelezo, are you? come in; yes, we are glad to see you, so often we have heard of you, and now we see you. We are very pleased.’ This was kindly spoken; so, stooping through the low doorway, I entered a roomy house. Some ten boys had just finished supper, and squatted round a smoky fire. I was glad to stretch out on the papyrus mat they gave me, keeping low down, to avoid the smoke which otherwise almost blinded me. I had with me half a fowl, a small bell (1¼d.), and three strings of beads. A boy spitted my fowl over the fire, while my attendants dozed, for they were worn out with the long march of the day. I begged some plantain, and a lad went to the door, and shouted, ‘Bring some plantain to the mbonge.’ A kindly woman brought some. When my meal was ready I asked for a pinch of salt and some water; they shouted for these, and got them. Having finished my meal, I coiled up in my blanket; and next morning, giving them the bell and three strings, thanked them, and so we parted.

The boys of the mbonge are well attended to; for to get the name of ‘stingy’ is the first step towards the terrible rumour of witch.

The constant activities of trade tend to develop the intellectual faculties of the people. Cute, long-headed men, with wonderful memories, having no account books or invoices, they ask you sensible questions; and if you can speak their language, an hour’s chat may be as pleasant with them as with some whiter and more civilised folk. If you have a bargain to drive with them, you need all your wits and firmness; while if they are stronger than you, or have no reason to respect you, they will have their way.

Clever in pottery and metal work, making hoes and knives, casting bracelets, anklets, and even bells from the brass rods of trade, beating out brass wire, and ribbon, they strike you at once as being of a superior type.

We might draw another picture. There are districts where there seems to be no energy in the people. Take, for instance, the Majinga or the Lukunga Valley, as we knew them two years ago. Here the natives live in the midst of plenty, for the soil is not to be equalled in richness. The proceeds of a goat sold on one of the markets will find a large family in palm fibre cloth for a year; while a crate or two of fowls will provide salt, gunpowder, and an occasional hoe or plate.

A boy grows up in this rich country, and for a while his intellect expands as he learns about the little world around him. As he grows older, he may bestir himself to find means to buy a gun, and then a wife: that accomplished, he has practically nothing more to learn or live for. He sleeps or smokes all day, unless about September the grass is burnt and there is a little hunting, though a war or a palaver may sometimes break the monotony. Otherwise, his wife cultivates the land, and feeds him; he eats and sleeps. Living such an animal life, his intellect stagnates, he becomes quarrelsome and stupid to a degree almost hopeless. Dirty, he is contented to see his hut fall to pieces almost over his head.

The women are content often with a rag for clothing. They wear a grass stem three inches long through the nose, and a dirty rag for an earring. The hair is matted with a mixture of oil and vegetable charcoal; and if a lady happen to be in mourning the same filthy compound is smeared over her face.

With the advent of white men this sad picture has begun to change. The Livingstone Inland Mission (American Baptists) and the International Association have stations among them; their transport and that of the Baptist Missionary Society (English) passes through the country. The people are coming forward as carriers; they sell their goats, fowls, etc., are getting cloth; and in this short time a change for the better is apparent. Here lies all the difference between the degraded and the higher types of the African. The intellect of the one is stagnant, while the other has everything to quicken it.

As children the better class will compare favourably with English boys; bright, sharp, anxious to learn, they push on well with their studies. Our schools are full of promise. At Stanley Pool the other day the boys were much concerned because a new boy had mastered his alphabet the first day. They all felt that he was too clever.

The future of these interesting people is full of the brightest hope. Give them the Gospel, and with it the advantages of education, and books to read; quicken within them tastes which will render labour a necessity and a pleasure; give them something high and noble to work and live for; and we shall see great and rapid changes. Christian Missions are no experiment. We have to deal with a vigorous race that will repay all that Christian effort can do on their behalf.