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Updated: May 1, 2025
Like the average New York restaurant waiter, he merely said what he thought his listener wanted to hear. I fervently hoped he was right because we not only had a series of rapids to shoot up-river, but at Kabambaie is a seething whirlpool that has engulfed hundreds of natives and their boats. At sunset we had only passed through the first of the troubled zones.
Finally at eight o'clock, and after it seemed that I had spent years on the trip, we bumped up against the shore of Kabambaie, within a hundred feet of the fatal spot. The faithful Moody, who preceded me, had revived life in the jonah jitney and at dawn the next day we started at full speed and reached Djoko Punda by noon.
Between Kabambaie and Djoko Punda there is practically no navigation on account of the succession of dangerous rapids. Since my faith in the jitney was still impaired I chose the river route and it gave me the most stirring of all my African experiences. The two motor boats at Tshikapa were out of commission so I started at daybreak in a whale-boat manned by forty naked native paddlers.
But so much time had been consumed in reaching Tshikapa that I determined to return to Kinshassa, go on to Matadi, and catch the boat for Europe at the end of August. There were two ways of getting back to Kabambaie. One was to go in an automobile through the jungle, and the other by boat down the Kasai.
We lunched by the roadside and afterwards I got into Dunn's car and resumed the journey. I sent the porters and teapoy men back to Kabambaie. Late in the afternoon we reached the bluffs overlooking the Upper Kasai. Across the broad, foaming river was Tshikapa. If I had not known that it was an American settlement, I would have sensed its sponsorship. It radiated order and neatness.
Every piece of machinery and every tin of food had to be transported thousands of miles and this condition still obtains. The motor road from Djoko Punda to Kabambaie was hacked by American engineers through the jungle. It is comparatively easy to get supplies to Djoko Punda although everything must be shifted from railway to boat several times.
When he stopped pounding the paddlers ceased their efforts. The only way to make the Congo native work is to provide him with noise. All day we travelled down the river through schools of hippopotami, some of them near enough for me to throw a stone into the cavernous mouths. The boat capita told me that he would get to Kabambaie by sundown.
The distance through the jungle was exactly seventy-two miles and he covered it, as I discovered when I reached Tshikapa, in exactly twenty-six hours, a remarkable feat. By this time my confidence in the African jitney was somewhat shaken. A new motor-boat had just been received at Kabambaie and I thought I would take a chance with it and start up the Kasai the next day.
This was not necessary for, thanks to the Forminiere organization, which always has hundreds of native porters at Kabambaie, I was able to organize a caravan in a few hours. After lunch we departed with a complete outfit of tents, bedding, and servants. The black personnel was thirty porters and a picked squad of thirty-five teapoy boys to carry Moody and myself.
Between Djoko Punda and Tshikapa the material is hauled in motor trucks and ox-drawn wagons or conveyed on the heads of porters to Kabambaie. Some of it is transshipped to whale-boats and paddled up to Tshikapa, and the remainder continues in the wagons overland. During 1920 seven hundred and fifty tons of freight were hauled from Djoko Punda in this laborious way.
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