212 FROM KIVU TO TANGANYIKA 



and they are seldom in a hurry to help you if you 

 do not wear the uniform of the State official. 



Between the Albert Edward Nyanza and the 

 Congo we changed porters no less than seven times, 

 and I can only remember one occasion when we 

 had no difficulty about it. That was at Nya- 

 Lukemba, at the south end of Lake Kivu, where, 

 within a few hours of our request for forty porters, 

 at least 150 presented themselves and clamoured to 

 be engaged. We selected forty magnificent giants, 

 and the few days during which they carried our 

 loads were about the pleasantest part of the journey ; 

 they picked up the loads as if they weighed nothing, 

 trotted off with them, and invariably arrived at the 

 camping-place long before we did. Those were a 

 brilliant and much-appreciated exception to the rule 

 among Congo porters, who are generally quite as 

 slow and as disinclined to work as the Uganda 

 variety. 



Most of the porters in the Congo carry spears, 

 and many of them, particularly in the Kivu district, 

 carry also long, narrow-bladed knives in wooden 

 sheaths ornamented with copper wire. They are 

 truculent-looking ruffians, and appear to be quite 

 capable of any villainy ; but luckily they are arrant 

 cowards, where white men are concerned. I very 

 well remember one day walking, as I fondly 

 imagined, miles behind the caravan, and coming 

 suddenly on the whole crowd of porters sitting on 

 the path and eating bananas, which they had stolen 



