ed Behn,--many of his colleagues are
Scandinavians,--and he had spent eighteen years in the Congo. He knew
every one of the thousand nooks, turns, snags and sand-bars of the
Lualaba. One of the first things that impressed me was the uncanny
ingenuity with which all the Congo boats are navigated through what
seems at first glance to be a mass of vegetation and obstruction.

The bane of traffic is the sand-bar, which on account of the swift
currents everywhere, is an eternally changing quantity. Hence a native
is constantly engaged in taking soundings with a long stick. You can
hear his not unmusical voice, from the moment the boat starts until she
ties up for the night. The native word for water is "_mia_." Whenever I
heard the cry "_mia mitani_," I knew that we were all right because that
meant five feet of water. With the exception of the Congo River no boat
can draw more than three feet because in the dry season even the
mightiest of streams declines to an almost incredibly low level.

My white fellow passengers on the "Louis Cousin" were mostly Belgians on
their way home by way of Stanleyville and the Congo River, after years
of service in the Colony. We all ate together in the tiny dining saloon
forward with the captain, who usually provides the "chop," as it is
called. I now made the acquaintance of goat as an article of food. The
young nanny is not undesirable as an occasional novelty but when she is
served up to you every day, it becomes a trifle monotonous.

The one rival of the goat in the Congo daily menu is the chicken, the
mainstay of the country. I know a man who spent six years in the Congo
and he kept a record of every fowl he consumed. When he started for home
the total registered exactly three thousand. It is no uncommon
experience. Occasionally a friendly hunter brought antelope or buffalo
aboard but goat and fowl, reinforced by tinned goods and an occasional
egg, constituted the bill of fare. You may wonder, perhaps, that in a
country which is a continuous chicken-coop, there should be a scarcity
of eggs. The answer lies in the fact that during the last few years the
natives have conceived a sudden taste for eggs. Formerly they were
afraid to eat them.

Of course, there was always an abundance of fruit. You can get
pineapples, grape fruit, oranges, bananas and a first cousin of the
cantaloupe, called the _pei pei_, which when sprinkled with lime juice
is most delicious. Bananas can be purchased for