The Eastern Congo 



of human flesh provided by other victims killed for the 

 purpose. 



In these days cannibalism amongst the Wambuba is con- 

 fined to the exhumation of dead bodies and eating them, 

 for some of these human hyaenas think nothing of robbing 

 a week-old grave of its contents, such cases frequently coming 

 to the notice of the missionaries in the district. The more 

 enlightened natives have to bury their dead secretly to avoid 

 this ghoulish practice. 



Cannibalism dies hard in the Congo as instanced by the 

 recrudescence of the practice during the German East African 

 campaign, when many authenticated cases occurred of the 

 Congo native soldiers eating the dead on the battlefield at 

 night after an engagement. 



A case of cannibalism that was brought to my notice was 

 of a man who practically held up a district by waylaying 

 solitary passers-by in a lonely part of the forest, killing them, 

 robbing them, and eating them ; he was eventually found 

 out in rather an extraordinary manner, for he started selling 

 human meat which he disposed of ostensibly as flesh of 

 antelopes. The local villagers knew possibly what the meat 

 was, but as the headman was a confederate they did not give 

 the game away. Eventually, however, one of his would-be 

 victims escaped although badly wounded and identified the 

 man from whom he had bought some meat the day previously. 

 The man and his confederate escaped justice by fleeing the 

 neighbourhood and, it is thought, joined the Anyioto Leopard 

 sect, but in the subsequent hue and cry their retreat in the 

 recesses of the forest was found, containing a quantity of 

 human skulls and bones which they had partially destroyed 

 by burning. 



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