HUNTING AND HUNTED IN BELGIAN CONGO 



a shudder and wend our way to the camp under the light 

 of the glittering heavenly bodies, and stand upon the 

 hill looking over the tree tops of the country below, upon 

 which the moon sheds a sea of silvery light. 



Let us return to the country around the Aka, Kibali 

 and towards the Welle. I doubt if a white face has been 

 seen in parts of the Mangbettu country, and there are 

 certainly not many who can speak of having reached 

 this region at the age of twenty-three. 



It is an interesting fact that here in the neighbour- 

 hood of Dungu we are as near to the Atlantic as to the 

 Indian Ocean. Sugar-cane and maize are to be met with 

 in all directions, the land is fairly well cultivated and 

 the villages like those of the Legworo are distributed 

 irregularly over the country. The clothing of the people 

 who have not yet come in contact with the missions 

 consists chiefly of a piece of beaten bark from the fig 

 tree hung round the waist from a grass cord or a shred 

 of creeper. 



Numerous stories reached my ears of hidden stores 

 of ivory, and I know for a fact that three years ago a 

 trader obtained a sixty-pound tusk in exchange for a 

 cup and saucer. 



Women's suffrage seems to have dated from time 

 immemorial among these folk, and the husband does 

 nothing without first consulting his wife. The house- 

 hold duties are performed entirely by the women, who 

 sit on little stools or benches in front of their huts busily 

 pounding the maize or making baskets of grass and reeds. 

 In most cases when we were seen to approach the work 

 would be hastily dropped, and they would retire into 

 the seclusion of their huts together with the children, 

 who would peep out of the semi-darkness within and 

 stare at us through the tiny opening, not more than two 

 feet high, that did duty for a door. 



The walls of their dwellings rose only a short distance 



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