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Small matters thus appear to be far more important than they really are and the story of any little adventure soon becomes magnified out of all recognition. This, perhaps, accounts also for some of the absurd stories of atrocities. On the last day of the year we reach Leopoldville and are comfortably installed in the Inspector's house.
With Leopoldville above and Boma below, still nearer the mouth of the river, Matadi makes a centre link in the chain of the three important towns of the Lower Congo. When Henry M. Stanley was halted by the cataracts and forced to leave the river he disembarked his expedition on the bank opposite Matadi, and a mile farther up-stream.
The Custom House is an imposing structure near the beach and the Cathedral is a handsome Gothic church, but as one end was covered with scaffolding, it was not looking its best. A light railway runs up the hill to the barracks of the native regiment and a special train was arranged for the passengers of the Leopoldville. Hotel accommodation in Sierra Leone is, like the demand for it, limited.
And I looked for such a hospital as the one I saw at Boma, such as our government has placed for its employes along, and at both ends of, the Isthmus of Panama, and, except for the one at Leopoldville, I saw none.
On the river-front at Leopoldville a grossly fat man, collarless, coatless, purple-faced, perspiring, was rushing up and down. He was the captain of the port. Black women had assembled to greet returning black soldiers, and the captain was calling upon the black sentries to drive them away.
Most of them indeed came off to dinner and held a kind of concert in the saloon afterwards. All night long winches and men were creaking, groaning, and shouting, as some of the cargo was put overboard into two large lighters. It was not however, destined for Banana and was transshipped here only to lighten the Leopoldville so that she could pass a certain bar higher up the river.
In order to feed these people and the soldiers of the Force Publique at Leopoldville, about a ton and a half of kwanga is prepared every day from the manioc grown in the villages around, and every able bodied native has to contribute his or her quota of work.
But it runs a passenger train only three times a week, and though the distance is so short, and though the train starts at 6:30 in the morning, it does not get you to Leopoldville the same day. Instead, you must rest over night at Thysville and start at seven the next morning. That afternoon at three you reach Leopoldville.
It is very possible that this will be transhipped at Banana into a lighter which will be towed to Matadi; secondly it will travel by train to Leopoldville; thirdly by steamer to Bumba beyond which point the larger vessels do not run; fourthly by small steamer to Ibembo; fifthly by canoe to Dzamba during which journey it has to be carried by hand past some rapids; sixthly by the Milz to Buta and seventhly by hand to Bomokandi.
We were now coasting off Liberia and Captain Sparrow who was in command of the Leopoldville cheered us up with the statement that the charts of this part had not been revised for eighty years, that there were many rocks and that ships frequently went ashore here. Wreckers then went out and looted everything on board. It is not therefore, a pleasant place in which to make an enforced landing.
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