226 FROM TANGANYIKA TO THE CONGO 



and there were no pupils left to be taught by the 

 Fathers, who had, therefore, gone elsewhere. Almost 

 daily, as we walked westward from Tanganyika, 

 and, later on, in the Manyuema country, we passed 

 corpses by the roadside, dead of the terrible sick- 

 ness ; and it was no uncommon thing for the caravan 

 to make a wide detour to avoid some unspeakable 

 horror. The people are brutally inhuman to the 

 victims of the disease. So soon as a man becomes 

 incapable of supporting himself, he is turned out of 

 the village to subsist for a short time on loathsome 

 garbage and soon to starve like a dog. So long as 

 I live I shall be haunted by the recollection of one 

 of these miserable creatures, who came crawling 

 about our camp not far from Tanganyika. The 

 porters — ' our black brothers,' as some people would 

 call them — were stuffing themselves on the fat of the 

 land at the time, and though he was one of their own 

 tribe, they jeered at his infirmities — he could not 

 walk, but dragged himself along the ground with his 

 hands — and refused to give him a scrap of the food 

 for which he begged. Heartrending spectacles of 

 this sort can be seen on the outskirts of almost 

 every village between the Congo and Tanganyika. 



The Congo State is making strenuous efforts, by 

 the establishment of lazarettos in which infected 

 people are confined, to check the spread of the 

 disease ; but it is a task beset with innumerable 

 difficulties, and the medical staff of the State is 

 hopelessly inadequate in numbers. Thus, for the 



