A HORRIBLE STORY FROM AFRICA.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2555, 24 November 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

A HORRIBLE STORY FROM AFRICA.

Atrocities on the Aruwimi. Mr. Graham Wilmot-Brooke, who returned in July to Stanley Pool from the Upper Congo and Mobangi River, by which route he has been attempting a hitherto unsuccessful pioneer journey iuto the Central Soudan, with a view to future missionary work, writes to his father, Lieutenant-Colonel WilmotBrooke, of Shortlands, Kent, saying that he had interviewed four white meu from the Aruwimi camp—two last autumn and two this summer ; also an Arab interpreter, who is returning invalided. "It is now nearly a year," he says, " since the first nnwß arrived from Aruwimi camp, telling of the first signs of difficulty in the pathless jungle morasses which lay between the marching column and their goal. Month after month passed away, and not a word was heard till just of late, when the reoccupation of Stanley Falls by the Congo Free State authorities has reopened traffic, and brought us full accounts of the interval from white men, Zanzibaris, and natives. Of the marching column itself we have no direct news whatever. Nine deserters, who started back direct from the camp, were caught by the natives, and only two escaped, the seven others being cooked and eaten." The rest of the letter is full of horrors, the news from the Aruwimi, Mr. Wilmot-Brooke says, producing at Stanley Pool a general feeling little short of consternation. In order, the writer says, that Englishmen at home may know the cxtaeme degree of wickedness, the atrocious cruelty that has been and is taking place in connection with the force left behind at Aruwimi camp, a few words of explanation are necessary as to the state of affairs in the neighbourhood of Stanley Falls. THE RAIDS OF SLAVE DEALING CANNIBALS. The events at Stanley Falls, which will soon be calling forth eager and (let us hope.) indignant inquiry, are not done by Zanzibaris. It is not generally known in England how these men acquire such large stores of ivory, when the transport of a siugle load of merchandise from Zanzibar costs £11. The explanation is this. The Zanzibar traders settled about the Falls have in their pay large bodies of Manyema cannibals, whose wild-beast ferocity is so great, and whose cruelty is so diabolical, that the Zanzibaris express horror and disgust at the bare idea of associating with them in their maurading raids. Eye-wituessej, both English and Arab, have assured me that it is a common thing, which they themselves have seen on passing through the Manyema camps, to see human heads and fent sticking out of their cooking-pots. To these men the Arabs issue firearms and send them off to catch the humam beings with whom the ivory must be bought; for buying ivory with cloth is a slow and needlessly expensive process, and Tippoo Tib has discovered a system far superior, by which every tusk of ivory can Jbe wrung out of a district, and that for a few kegs of powder and the loan of a few old flintlocks. Off go the man-eaters with shouting and yelling and great jubilation. COUNTENANCED BY ENGLISHMEN. What follows is now too well known ; no need to hunt up the descriptions in volumes of Livingstone's travels, for the Manyema men who came under the patronage of the expedition to the hitherto untouched Aruwimi region have carried on their work absolutely unchecked in the immediate neighbourhood of the camp ; and Englishmen have stood and watched while their Manyema allies fired at the head of unhappy men and women who had leaped into the river and were trying to swim across, and have gathered round the Manyema camp-fires at night to hear them relate their prowess. WHAT FOLLOWS THE BAID. The raid is over, the first unexpected volley usually renderingfurther opposition hopeless ; the dead are cooked and eaten, the village is nothing but smouldering embers, the women and children are hurried off as prisoners to the Zanzibaris camps, with rich stores of plunder, goats and fowls and plantains and native canoes and native furniture —far more than covering the cost of the raid. And now " trade" begins. In a few days the unfortunate husbands and parents of the prisoners come out of the bush. They know what is wanted ; they have to ransom their relatives with ivory, and, the price having been agreed upon, the poor creatures go off and collect it. When at last they have scraped it together the' prisoners are returned, and the remnants of a once populous town go off to find a new refuge. Zanzibaris have an object in giving back the prisoners when the ransom is paid ; they will do duty againHardly have the wretched fugitives settled down again, built some huts, and begun to plaut, than the Manyemas swoop down on them afresh, and the whole process is gone through again, as the residents at Aruwimi camp can testify. " THE BLESSINGS OF COMMERCE."

Do Englishmen who are anxious to see " the blessings of commerce" introduced to Stanley Falls, asks Mr. WilmotBrooke, know what it means ? It means that Zanzibaris will get a vast supply of cheap merchandise and a vast demand for ivory. The merchandise will pay for guns and powder from the East Coast ; the men used till now to carry the tusks away to the coast can now all be employed in the far more paying work of man-catch-ing. The 400 Manyemas who have at last consented to go with Major Barttelot have only done so after expressly stipulating that they are not to be interfered with ; so that pillage, murder, and maneating will no doubt lay waste the the country alone the line of march, as they have already the country round the camp. The column will throw open still more virgin country to the Manyemas, who will be able to supply the Stanley Falls trading factory with marvellously cheap ivory ; dead men will tell no tales, and the midnight volley and shrieks of dying men will never be heard from far back iu the gloomy forest by the passing Congo steamers, and the new Governor, Tippoo Tib, can scarcely be expected to object to deeds which only struck Englishmen as sensational scenes for their sketch-books, and which called forth from them no protest because " our object was WORSE THINGS YET. All these things, the letter concludes, are known to all who know Upper Congo ; they are undisputed, and they furnish an example of doing evil that good may come of it on the part of the Aruw'imi camp force which has hardly ever been surpassed. But there are worse things yet which will have to be throughly investigated—tales of raids, murder, even cannibalism, in which it will be a relief to hear the Englishmen present confined themselves to being passive spectators.