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Updated: June 18, 2025
Matadi is a hill of red iron and the heat is grand. Everything in this country is grand. The river is, in places, seven miles wide, the sunsets are like nothing earthly, and the black people are like brooding shadows of lost souls, that is, if souls have shadows. Most of the blacks in this town are "prisoners" with a steel ring around the neck, and chained in long lines.
I knew from this reply, which Lobo duly translated to me, that our friend Matadi was an adept in the art so peculiarly characteristic of the African savage of lying, and must be dealt with accordingly. So I said to Lobo "Tell him that he is mistaken.
That but for the interference of strangers he might have shot a man, did not interest him. In the outcome of what he regarded merely as an incident, he saw cause neither for congratulation or self-reproach. For his conduct he laid the blame upon the sun, and doubled his dose of fruit salts. Everett was again at Matadi, waiting for the Nigeria to take on cargo before returning to Liverpool.
The work was pushed with indomitable energy. In 1894 a vigorous campaign against the Arab slave-traders was brought to a successful conclusion. In 1898 the first railway connecting Matadi, on the Lower Congo, with Leopoldville, on the Stanley Pool, opened the great waterway as far as the Stanley Falls.
And vhen dhey had surrendered he exchanged dhem to Matadi for slaves t'ree slaves for every white man so dat Matadi might have plenty of victims white victims dhey consider very good for de annual de annual what you call it, eh? festa." "Festival, I suppose you mean," said I, with an involuntary shudder. "And, pray, Senor Lobo, do you happen to know the date of this festival?"
"And are the people still alive, then?" I asked. "They were when I last heard of them," answered Mendouca. "But it is quite possible that by this time they or at least a part of them have been tortured to death by Matadi the chief to whom I sold them as a sacrifice to his fetish." "Gracious powers, how horrible!" I exclaimed.
To the Belgian colonial official and to the native, Franck incarnated a sort of All Highest. In the Congo all functionaries are called "Bula Matadi," which means "The Rock Breaker." It is the name originally bestowed on Stanley when he dynamited a road through the rocks of the Lower Congo. Franck, however, was a super "Bula Matadi."
That but for the interference of strangers he might have shot a man, did not interest him. In the outcome of what he regarded merely as an incident, he saw cause neither for congratulation or self-reproach. For his conduct he laid the blame upon the sun, and doubled his dose of fruit salts. Everett was again at Matadi, waiting for the Nigeria to take on cargo before returning to Liverpool.
On the crest were a thousand native women, jeering, hooting, and pointing their fingers at the Minister, who immediately asked the cause of the demonstration. When the agent called for an explanation a big black woman said: "Ask the 'Bula Matadi' why the franc buys so little now? We only get a few goods for a big lot of money."
For each man's presence in that force there was good and sinister reason, for these were no mere tax-evaders, poor, starved wretches fleeing from the rule which Bula Matadi imposed. There was a blood price on almost every head, and in a dozen prisons at Boma, at Brazaville, and Equatorville, and as far south as St.
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