THE BANTU OF WESTERN AFRICA 



hands and feet, their well-shaped legs 

 with full calves, and their abundant heads 

 of hair." 



But if the coast members of the 

 Congo tribes are physically inferior to 

 the natives of the interior, they compen- 

 sate for this by intelligence. Stanley 

 describes them as exceptionally shrewd in 

 trade. He purchased the site of the 

 Congo Free State station at Vivi from 

 some of the Kabinda, and found they 

 drove a hard bargain. 



''In the management of a bargain," 

 said Stanley, " I should back the Congoese 

 native against Jew or Christian, Parsee or 

 Banyan, in all the round world. Un- 

 thinking men may perhaps say cleverness 

 at barter and shrewdness in trade consort 

 not with their unsophisticated condition 

 and degraded customs. ' Unsophisticated ' 

 is the last term I should ever apply to 

 an African child or man in connection 

 with the knowledge of how to trade. 

 Apply the term, if you please, to yourself 

 or to a Eed Indian, but it is utterly 

 inapplicable to an African, and this is 

 my seventeenth year of acquaintance with 

 him. I have seen a child of eight do 

 more tricks of trade in an hour than the 

 cleverest European trader on the Congo 

 could do in a month. There is a little 

 boy at Bolobo, aged six, named Lingenji, 

 Avho would make more profit out of 1 

 worth of cloth than an English boy of 

 fifteen would make out of 10 worth. 

 Therefore, when I write of a Congo native, 

 whether he is of the Bakongo, Bayanzi, 



or Bateke tribes, remember to associate him with an almost inconceivable amount of natural 

 shrewdness, and power of indomitable and untiring chaffer." 



Tbe tribes at the mouth of the Congo have been subject to foreign influences for so long 

 a time that they are less interesting ethuographically than the more primitive races of the 

 interior. Between Stanley Pool and the coast races are the Bakongo, whom Johnston has described 

 as intermediate between the pure Bantu of the interior and the Kabinda: "Their skin is not 

 the dead coal-black of the coast tribes, but is often a warm chocolate or ruddy brown. They 

 do not practise much personal adornment, either by cicatrisation, tattooing, or painting the 

 skin with divers pigments. They are naturally a hairy race, especially about the face some 

 of the chiefs wearing copious beards, whiskers, and moustaches but on the body the pile is 

 plucked out from the age of puberty, otherwise their bodies would be partially covered with 

 short curly hair. The two front incisor teeth are occasionally chipped; but this is not a 

 regular custom, as it is farther up the river. In character the Bakongo are indolent, fickle, 

 and sensual. They dislike bloodshed as a general rule, and, save for certain superstitious 

 customs, are rarely cruel, showing kindness and gentleness to animals. When their passions 



A CONGO WOMAN. 



