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Updated: June 6, 2025
I invariably reply by saying that the contemporary feminine fashion of near-undress in America and Europe made me feel that some of the chocolate-hued ladies of the jungle were almost over-clothed! The fourth day of my trip was also the American Fourth of July. Captain Carrie and I celebrated by toasting the British and American Navies, and it was not in Kasai water.
The next chance we had at one of them on shore came on our first evening in the Kasai just before sunset. Captain Jensen was steering for a flat island of sand and grass where he meant to tie up for the night.
The Katanga is, with the exception of certain palm fruit areas, the bulwark of British interests in the Congo. The American domain is the Upper Kasai district. Conspicuous among the Americans at Elizabethville was Preston K. Horner, who constructed the smelter plant and who was made General Manager of the Union Miniere in 1913.
Aigrettes and birds of paradise fly on all sides and every hour reveals a hideous crocodile sunning himself on a sandspit. Night on the Congo enhances the loneliness that you feel on all the Central African rivers. Although the settlements are more numerous and larger than those on the Lualaba and the Kasai, there is the same feeling of isolation the moment darkness falls.
The Kasai flows a little to the east of the town of Mai, and near it there is a large waterfall. They describe the Kasai as being there of very great size, and that it thence bends round to the west. He stated also that the Kasai received another river, named the Lubilash. There is but one opinion among the Balonda respecting the Kasai and Quango.
The more I saw of the Congo River it is nearly twice as large as the Mississippi the more I realized that it is in reality a parent of waters. It has half a dozen tributaries that range in length from 500 to 1,000 miles each. The most important are the Lualaba and the Kasai. Others include the Itimbiri, the Aruwimi and the Mubangi.
This will tap a thickly populated region and enable the diamond mines of the Kasai to get the labour they need so sorely. The Robert Williams railway through Angola will be another addition to our transportation facilities. One of the richest regions of the Congo is the north-eastern section. The gold mines at Kilo are now only accessible by river.
The Congo is serene, brooding, majestic, and fringed with an endless verdure. The Kasai, although 1,500 miles in length, is narrower and more pugnacious. Its brown banks and grim flanking mountains offer a welcome change from the eternal green of the great river that gives the Colony its name. The Kasai was discovered by Livingstone in 1854. I also got another change.
While at the ford of the Kasai we were subjected to a trick, of which we had been forewarned by the people of Shinte. A knife had been dropped by one of Kangenke's people in order to entrap my men; it was put down near our encampment, as if lost, the owner in the mean time watching till one of my men picked it up.
She flew the flag of the Huileries du Congo Belge, the palm oil concern founded by Lord Leverhulme and the most important all-British commercial interest in the Congo. She was one of a fleet of ten boats that operate on the Congo, the Kasai, the Kwilu and other rivers. I not only had a comfortable cabin but the rarest of luxuries in Central Africa, a regulation bathtub, was available.
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