ROUGH TRIP IN AFRICA.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 98, 16 October 1911, Page 3

ROUGH TRIP IN AFRICA.

WOMEN WITH BEAKS LIKE BIRDS. NEW CROCODILES AND GIRAFFES. Sydney, September 22, "As I passed grave after grave of explorers, scientists, Government officials, and traders; as I was warned by Government men repeatedly, not to continue, or I would probably not return; as ] remember the climatic dangers, the dangers from wild beasts, and the yet more dangerous representatives of the human race; as I look back to the days and weeks of torrential rains, of mJasTrfabreeding swamps, impassable rivers, and impossible tribes. I realise with a deep feeling of humility the goodness of God and the faithfulness of my friends." Thus Dr. H. Kaa-1 W. Kumm, mis-' sionary and explorer, who came to Sydney on Tuesday, spoke of his travels in Central Africa. Seven times, he said, he has penetrated into Central Africa, and recently he made a journey from the Niger to the Nile. Dr. Kumm is visiting Australia party to see the country and partly to give some information about the Soudan- to a number of University graduates who are thinking of going out as missionaries. At his private rooms in the Hotel Australia Dr. Kumm was visited by many people in- | terestwl in mission work. FIRST WHITE MAN THROUGH.

He says his last journey was of considerable interest, as he passed through tcrirtory where no white man had ever been hefore. Before his trip was made this country was the last great inhabited, unexplored part of the globe. He hud 250 natives- with him, but he took no other white man. The journey commenced in West Africa by way of the Niger river, thence up the Benue (the eastern tributary of the Niger), which is navigable in the rainy season for 900 miles. From the Upper Benue he crossed to the Sha.ri river, which runs into Lake Chad, up to Chari, to Port Archanvgault, and- on to the Gazelle river province in the Anglo-Egyptian Soudan, 1.50(1 miles south-east of Khartoum. Thence he returned to civilisation by the Nile. Four years the trip was expected to occupy, and provisions to last that time were carried; "but," says Dr. Kumm, "a remarkable combination of circumstances enabled mc to get through in fifteen months." "We obtained collections of butterflies, heads of wild beasts and skins, many of which I have sent to the British Museum. Among these specimens was a strange giraffe —a. new species. It had three horns, and the two back horns each had a short brand 1 ., making, as it were, two bonis. In the Shari river also we found a weird new species of crocodile, with stripes round its body like a zebra. HARD ON THE WOMEN FOLK.

"But most wonderful of all were the people of the Sara-Kabba tribe. The women have faces' with beaks like birds. This is caused by the tribes disfiguring the girls' faces from infancy. When they are little children the girls have a piece of wood stuck into their lips to force tltem outward, and as the lips grow nut large pieces of wood are forced in until their lips are decorated with plates 3in or Oin in diameter. On account of this the women cannot speak. They ean only make a mumbling: noise. I asked one of the chiefs whether it was to beautify the women or to silence them that this disfigurement was practised, and I was told that these were not the reasons. The object was that the women might not exercise their attractions! over the Mohammeridan slave raiders, who used to kidnap them." THE SLEEPING SICKNESS. T)r. Kumm said he was interested in the. sleeping sickness of Central Africa. It was one of the terrible epidemic scourges of that part of the world. Large districts had been entirely depopulated by it, hundreds of thousands of natives having fallen before the microbe which caused the disease. lie explained that the disease was carried by the tsetse fly. There were two species of the fly. the smaller being very similar to a 'lumpily, except that it's wings were crossed when it was at rest. The larger was something like a horse fly. The tsetse stung and injected flic microbe, and perhaps in a few days the patient would feel the cll'ccts. Or he might not be affected for two years. The symptoms were great sleepiness, permanent fever, and fearful pain, and the victim lost, weight until he fell away to a skeleton. The larger fly killed horses and cattle, and on his last journey he lest 2o oxen and eight horses by

./ this means, though none of his negroes "l \ died. Many medical men were now! studying the disease and seeking for a] ~ cure or antido-.e. Other diseases- his | . j natives- were troubled with wire ma-V laria, cer-ebro-spinal meningitis, and gui- , I nea worm. j, CHRISTIANITY COMING. »| "If the crossing of Africa is to-day an ! | accomplished fact," Dr. Kumm modestly said, "it is simply that God lias seen -1 fit to use an instrument. God's time f has come that" the, tribes dn the heart i of the African continent should be won for the Christian faith. The last babies I | of our British Empire from the nurseries . of Southern Nigeria and the Anglo-Egyp- . tion Soudan are stretching out their : hands to us, and they should be saved t from the baneful consequences of the ; blight which would fall upon these lands . should Islam succeed in its threatened conquest. Ethiopia is stretching out her hands unto God. Christ is stretching out His hands to Ethiopia, to His little ones, and we. as followers of Christ, may either raise or i-cptils-e. For the first lime in the history of Central Africa we may put the outstretched hands of the sons of midnight, outstretched from the heart of the Dark Continent, into the outstretched hands of Christ, the Li "lit of the World."