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Here we buy some fish and eggs and then go on to Ikoko, the crew singing native songs and Christian hymns as they paddle along. The Mission house is very prettily situated, and is a wooden building, with that very rare luxury in the Congo, glass windows. Here we are met by Mrs. Clarke, who has spent many years with her husband in Africa.
On August 23rd we visit Bikoro a large State plantation of coffee, cocoa and rubber, situated on the bank of the Lake about eight or nine miles from Ikoko. It is conducted by Mr. Monaie, a Swiss gentleman, who has had much experience in horticulture. Here nature has been closely imitated but improved upon.
The Mission has a good farm and garden, and since the climate is not as bad as in many parts, its inmates enjoy fair health. A large wooden building is used as a chapel and school, and near it is a saw pit and a carpenter's shop where the boys make furniture and boxes for sale at Irebu and other Posts in the neighbourhood, for the furniture of the Ikoko Mission is quite famous.
There is also an old lady in Ikoko, the widow of a chief, who is reported to be very clever as a healer. This old person has European features but has an unpleasant expression.
An examination of the boy however, showed he was suffering from a kind of bony tumour. There are several chiefs in Ikoko and one of them also practises as a doctor. He has cleared a space about ten feet in diameter and enclosed it for a consulting room, while an inner chamber, still more closely surrounded, is the secret place where the infusions are made and the charms and fetishes consulted.
On August 22nd we take a trip up a small river to the East of Ikoko which winds through dense forest and is evidently full of fish, for at intervals, barricades are erected which stretch right across the river, with the exception of a small space to allow canoes to go up and down.
The village of Ikoko consists of groups of huts separated from each other by the tall grass, which here is eighteen or twenty feet long, but as the ends bend over, not above twelve or fifteen feet high. The people seem idle, contented and happy, the chief industry being fishing and net-making. Mr.
Of course the food cases were all empty, the wine drunk, the salt paid away to natives and the petroleum burnt; still for myself, three boys and excess baggage, the fare for the two hundred miles was over £25. Just before we left Leopoldville, who should enter the carriage but Mr. Joseph Clarke, of Ikoko, and another Mr. Clark, who is also a Missionary.
Clarke told me he had sent to the Commission of Enquiry some new photographs of the boy without a hand whom he had shown to me at Ikoko and was convinced that the world would be startled when the report appeared. All the meetings of the Commission are held in public and therefore the evidence submitted at them is already known.
On August 20th we start for Bikoro under a threatening sky. It is indeed soon apparent that a tornado is crossing the Lake towards us, for great banks of dense clouds advancing rapidly from the south west now obscure the sun. It would be impossible to travel through the storm, so we turn the boat and make for a creek which bounds Ikoko on the east.
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