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Updated: June 20, 2025
"You leave zat in Boma, wid ze bankers, eh?" "Yes." "But you haf von big lettair of credit, not so?" "Yes, we have a letter of credit," answered Randolph Rover. "But that won't do you any good, nor the money at the banker's neither." "Ve see about zat, monsieur. Proceed," and Captain Villaire waved his hand toward Dan Baxter.
The two staples of commerce are now represented by palm-oil, which can be produced in quantities over the lowlands upon the whole river delta, and along the banks from the mouth to Boma, a distance of at least fifty direct miles.
Within three-quarters of an hour we were seated on the mud veranda of the tembe of Sultan bin Ali, who, because of his age, his wealth, and position being a colonel in Seyd Burghash's unlovely army is looked upon by his countrymen, high and low, as referee and counsellor. His boma or enclosure contains quite a village of hive-shaped huts and square tembes.
"Captain Villaire was about to torture us into writing letters home asking for the money he wanted as a ransom. Baxter put it into his head that we were very rich." "Oh, please don't say anything more about it!" groaned the unfortunate bully. "I that Frenchman put up this job all on his own hook." "I don't believe it," came promptly from Randolph Rover. "You met him, at Boma; you cannot deny it."
Only the natives who have been sentenced to more than one year are sent here and then after a time they are forwarded to the penal settlements. Some are cannibals, but most are thieves, and all wear light chains. It is somewhat warm walking about Boma but there is no alternative, for there are no carriages and only a horse or two for the Governor General.
But that is still another story, the story of being charged five times in one day by angry elephants, and how I killed a bull elephant for the Akeley group. On the night of December the twenty-third I sat out in a boma watching for lions.
The period at which the peach and apricot come into blossom is about the end of the dry season, and artificial irrigation is necessary. The Batoka, the only arboriculturists in the country, rear native fruit-trees alone the mosibe, the motsikiri, the boma, and others.
The two things in the American invasion of the Congo that promise good to that unhappy country are that our country is represented at Boma by a most intelligent, honest, and fearless young man in the person of James A. Smith, our Consul-General, and that the actual work of operating the mines and rubber is in the hands of the Guggenheims.
Our entrance to his boma was quiet and unceremonious, for we came there quite unexpectedly hardly giving him time to prepare his musket and return our salute. Though we were allowed a ready admission, a guinea-fowl I shot on the way was not. The superstitious people forbade its entrance in full plumage, so it was plucked before being brought inside the palisade.
A lot of thorn branches are twisted together in a little circle, within which the hunter sits and waits for his lion. As in the tree method, a bait is placed near the boma, twelve or fifteen yards away, and a little loophole is arranged in the tangle of thorn branches through which the rifle may be trained upon the bait.
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