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An idea of the cheapness of food may be formed from the fact that Captain Neves purchased 380 lbs. of tobacco from the Bangalas for about two pounds sterling. This, when carried into central Londa, might purchase seven thousand five hundred fowls, or feed with meal and fowls seven thousand persons for one day, giving each a fowl and 5 lbs. of meal.
They are more peacefully inclined today and hundreds of them are employed as wood-boys and firemen on the river boats. The Bangalas practice cicatrization to an elaborate extent. This process consists of opening a portion of the flesh with a knife, injecting an irritating juice into the wound, and allowing the place to swell. The effect is to raise a lump or weal.
As soon as I reached the Congo River I saw that the natives were bigger and stronger than those of the Katanga and other sections that I had visited. The most important of the river tribes are the Bangalas, who are magnificent specimens of manhood. In Stanley's day they were masters of a considerable portion of the Upper Congo River region and contested his way skilfully and bitterly.
I spoke to him about the impolicy of treatment we had received at his hands, and quoted the example of the Bangalas, who had been conquered by the Portuguese, for their extortionate demands of payment for firewood, grass, water, etc., and concluded by denying his right to any payment for simply passing through uncultivated land.
There is a Court of Première Instance at Boma and others called Territorial Courts at Matadi, Stanley Pool, East Kwango, The Equator, Bangalas, Aruwimi, Stanley Falls and Kassai . In each Court is a Judge, an Officer of the Public Ministry and a Registrar, but in the Territorial Courts, the judge may assume the functions of all.
The women are usually more liberally marked than the men. Cicatrization is popular in various parts of Central Africa but nowhere to the degree that it prevails on the Congo River and among the Bangalas, where it is a tribal mark. I observed women whose entire bodies from the ankles up to the head were one mass of cicatrized designs. One of the favorite areas is the stomach.
A sect is reported to exist who kill men in order to take their hearts and offer them to the Barimo. The chieftainship is elective from certain families. Among the Bangalas of the Cassange valley the chief is chosen from three families in rotation. A chief's brother inherits in preference to his son. The sons of a sister belong to her brother; and he often sells his nephews to pay his debts.
If when negotiating with the Bangalas of Angola you do not quickly give them what they want, they go away and do not come back. Then perhaps they try to get possession of the coveted object by means of theft. It is otherwise with the Songos and Kiokos, who let you deal with them in the usual way. To buy even a small article you must go to the market; people avoid trading anywhere else.
One reason why the Bangalas take positions as firemen and woodboys on the river boats is that it enables them to go into business. The price of food at the small settlements up river is much less than at Kinshassa, where navigation from Stanleyville southward ends.
With a cup of salt a black man can start an endless chain of trading that will net him a considerable assortment of articles in time. The principal natives in the Upper Kasai are the Balubas, who bear the same relation to this area as the Bangalas do to the Upper Congo. The men are big, strong, and fairly intelligent. The principal tribal mark is the absence of the two upper central incisor teeth.
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