THE MAN WITHOUT THE HOE 



969 



fornia side, some 45 miles above Yuma. 

 The narrow flood-plain on either side 

 of the Colorado at this point is lower 

 than the banks immediately paralleling 

 the river itself. Ordinarily the river 

 runs between its self-made dikes of silt; 

 but in June, when the melting snows of 

 the mountains at its source enormously 

 swell its volume, it overflows its banks 

 and inundates the low ground on either 

 side. These lateral bottom lands are cov- 

 ered with a dense growth of willow, 

 arrow-weed, etc., and it is in the original 

 clearing of them that the farmer meets 

 with his hardest task. For, once cleared 

 and fenced against the cattle that range 

 the river bottom, his procedure is simple 

 in the extreme. 



In the arable valleys the flood-waters 

 cover the land little more than a month, 

 being drained by natural systems of 

 sloughs soon after the high water re- 

 cedes. There is thus yearly left after 

 the subsidence of the waters a new de- 

 posit of rich alluvial mud. In the fierce 

 heat of the desert sun and with a relative 

 atmospheric humidity of as low as five 

 per cent, the rate of evaporation is extra- 

 ordinary and the surface of the mud 

 dries quickly. As it dries it cracks, 

 marking the whole surface into large 

 blocks of fairly rectangular form, the 

 cracks between them being from one to 

 five inches in width and about twice as 

 deep (see pages 964, 965). 



The ground thus prepares itself for 

 the seeding, which takes place in late 

 autumn. The farmer merely sows his 

 seed broadcast over this surface, then 

 brushes over it with rude brooms made 

 of arrow-weed, so that all the seed finds 

 lodgment in the open cracks. Abundant 

 moisture remains beneath the sheltering 

 cakes of dried mud, and grain and all 

 sorts of vegetables thrive splendidly. No 

 cultivation of any sort is given, and all 

 that remains for the farmer to do is to 

 harvest his crop, in April or May, before 

 the next season's flood. Surely Nature 

 is nowhere kinder to the farmer than 

 here, where his fields are yearly irri- 

 gated, fertiHzed, and plowed for him by 

 her forces. 



AMONG THE CANNIBALS OF 

 BELGIAN KONGO 



A RECENT number of the Geographi- 

 cal Journal of London contains an 

 account by E. Torday of two years 

 passed in the Kasai country of the Bel- 

 gian Kongo. While the region explored 

 is no larger than New York and Penn- 

 sylvania combined, it is so cut up by 

 rivers and impenetrable forests that the 

 tribes inhabiting the country vary greatly 

 in their customs and language. Mr Tor- 

 day found cannibals living undisturbed, 

 and only a few miles distant geograph- 

 ically from these barbarous savages were 

 endless plantations of millet and grain, 

 tended by the most progressive negroes 

 of Africa. The following notes are from 

 his paper: 



Each chief in the Bushongo country 

 has a small group of pygmies under his 

 suzerainty. These people hunt for him, 

 and he provides them with vegetable 

 food in exchange for their game. Now 

 one group, abandoning the nomadic life, 

 has established itself in a small village 

 and has taken to agriculture. Only two 

 generations have passed since they left 

 the forest, and they have already lost 

 their pygmy appearance. Though not as 

 big as the Bushongo, they have attained 

 a stature far superior to that of the aver- 

 age pygmy. As intermarriage between 

 Bushongo and these ''half ghosts" (which 

 they are, considered to be) is out of the 

 question, it must be admitted that sun- 

 shine, air, and regular life have been the 

 main factors in this change. The Bush- 

 ongo, who believe that pygmies are e ^mi- 

 ghosts born from crevices of old trees, 

 told us that these Batwa, since the time 

 they adopted the normal life of human 

 creatures, even reproduce like ordinary 

 men, and showed us, as a great curiosity, 

 some normally born young babies. 



I cannot even make an attempt to give 

 a description of the art of this people. 

 Those who take interest in it will find in 

 the British Museum many hundreds of 

 objects collected by me, and will be 

 obliged to admit that a really pure Afri- 

 can art has been evolved by them — an 

 art which must be ranked high, even 



