AND THE CONGO FOEEST 197 



the small village of Liipauzula, which was about ten miles to the west of 

 Mbeni, and in the forest. The climb to this village was a very arduous 

 one, and its altitude must have been not far off 5,000 feet, situated on 

 the more broken, forest -covered dip of the plateau ridge between the 

 heights of Bulega on the north and the Albert Edward mountains on the 

 south-west. Lupanzula's village had been the headquarters of a celebrated 

 Manyema slave-raider, who had lived here for a long time with his 

 Swahili following. I am not sure that the Manyema had not Arab blood 

 in his veins. He was at any rate generally referred to locally as " the 

 Arab," and he certainly professed Muhammadanism. He had built for 



l6o. IN- THE CONGO FOREST : A CLEARING NEAR LUPANZULA's 



himself on either side of a broad street houses which were astonishingly 

 Arab in design, for this remote corner of the Congo Free State. The 

 carved, massive wooden doors might have been imported from Zanzibar, 

 but I expect they were made locally by a Zanzibari carpenter. In the 

 gardens- at the backs of the houses papaws and lime-trees had been 

 planted.'' The whole place might have been a village on tlie island of 

 Zanzibar. 



In spite of this element of Arab civilisation which the slave-trader 

 had certainly im[)lanted in the Congo Forest, he had made himself 

 notorious for his ravages and cruelties. Numbers of natives had been 

 horribly mutilated, hands and feet lopped off, and women's breasts cut 

 away. All these people talked Swahili, and explained to me that these 



