Page:The slave trade in the congo basin 1890.djvu/34

 for, as the Lufembé grow only manioc, and have more roots than are sufficient for the tribe, they are only too glad to exchange these for fish caught by their victims. And so when a market is held an armed truce is declared, and Lufembé and Malinga mingle together and barter, with their products held in one hand and a drawn knife ready in the other.

It can be readily imagined that the incessant persecution which the natives are suffering renders them cruel and remorseless. Throughout the regions of the Malinga they become so brutalized by hunger that they eat their own dead, and the appearance of one of their villages always denotes abject misery and starvation. I have repeatedly seen young children eating the root of the banana tree, vainly endeavoring to obtain some kind of nourishment from its succulence. That they are able to exist at all is a mystery. Every living object they are able to obtain is accepted as food; different kinds of flies, caterpillars, and crickets are all eaten by these people.

When one has lived for some time in Central Africa, one comes to understand the little impression that acts of the most atrocious and wanton cruelty make on the savage mind. Surrounded from childhood by scenes of bloodshed and torture, their holidays and great ceremonies marked by massacres of slaves, the mildest and most sensitive nature becomes brutalized and callous; and if this is so with the free, what must be the effect upon the slave, torn when a child from its mother, perhaps at the age of two years, and even in its infancy compelled to suffer privation. If indeed the child runs the gauntlet of cannibalism and execution ceremonies, it can hardly be expected that he will sympathize with any suffering.

The people on the lower art of the Upper Congo seldom practice slave-raiding. It is only when we come to the Bakuteé district that we are brought much in contact with it. The large villages around Stanley Pool, — Chumbiri, Bolobo, Lukolela, Butunu, Ngombé, Busindi, Irebu, — Lake Mantumba, and the Ubangi River all rely principally