AN EXPLORER’S VIEW OF THE CONGO 
or with the intention of organizing a raid 
upon the villages beyond. They often 
formed caravans of several hundred in- 
dividuals — men, women and children — 
carrying everything for the necessities 
of life with them, most of the men of 
course being armed with spears and 
arrows. No halfway respectable negro 
would leave his wife in the village. 
Even the chief’s more important women 
would have considered it a disgrace if 
they had been compelled to stay at home. 
Naturally the children were only too glad 
of an outing and no mother would leave 
her youngster behind. The forest sup- 
plies these negroes with everything 
their small plantations are unable to 
provide: building and household mate- 
rial; meat to be dried over the fire; the 
hides of game; plants for medicines; 
a great many charms; in fact every- 
thing they cannot find in the neighbor- 
hood of their villages, where they have 
usually cut down the forest. 
Rubber collecting is exactly the same 
kind of occupation as this other collect- 
ing, only it excludes all raids. There is 
not the slightest change, except that the 
natives add rubber to all the other things 
they gathered before. The remunera- 
tion given by the state at the time we 
entered the Congo was still in trade 
goods of excellent quality. In 1910 the 
natives, in spite of delivering this rubber 
as taxes, received more for it than later 
in 1914 after the introduction of cur- 
rency, as the price of this commodity had 
then dropped in the European market. 
When we passed through the same region 
again the natives openly complained that 
the commercial agents paid even less than 
the government officials formerly. 
Before the advent of the government 
these natives had to work much harder, 
as a result of the continued destruction 
brought about by internecine war. Vil- 
lages were burnt down and plantations 
©" A ‘Parisienne’’ of the Mangbetu tribe. 
The 
head is bound with a fine cord made of raffia, 
banana fibre or hair, while the natural hair is 
woven into a frame of rattan fibre. This toilet 
takes two days to perform 
destroyed and the men had to rebuild 
and replant and always to keep them- 
Makere woman. 
out as a tribal mark, and a bone pin is worn 
through the nasal septum 
The concha of the ear is cut 
