me, that adorns the native baby after its entrance
into the world is an anklet of blue beads. Later a strand of beads is
placed round its loins.

When you have heard such stories as I have just related, you realize
that despite his ignorance, appetite, and indolence, the Congo native
has some desirable qualities. He is shiftless but not without human
instincts. Nowhere are they better expressed than in his folklore.

IV

Two stops on the Congo River deserve special attention. In the Congo
there began in 1911 an industry that will have an important bearing on
the economic development of the Colony. It was the installation of the
first plant of the Huileries du Congo Belge. This Company, which is an
offshoot of the many Lever enterprises of England, resulted from the
growing need of palm oil as a substitute for animal fat in soap-making.
Lord Leverhulme, who was then Sir William Lever, obtained a concession
for considerably more than a million acres of palm forests in the Congo.
He began to open up so-called areas and install mills for boiling the
fruit and drying the kernels. He now has eight areas, and two of them,
Elizabetha and Alberta,--I visited both--are on the Congo River.

For hundreds of years the natives have gathered the palm fruit and
extracted the oil. Under their method of manufacture the waste was
enormous. The blacks threw away the kernel because they were unaware of
the valuable substance inside. Lord Leverhulme was the first to organize
the industry on a big and scientific basis and it has justified his
confidence and expenditure.

Most people are familiar with the date and the cocoa-nut palms. From the
days of the Bible they have figured in narrative and picture. The oil
palm, on the other hand, is less known but much more valuable. It is the
staff of life in the Congo and for that matter, practically all West
Africa. Thousands of years ago its sap was used by the Egyptians for
embalming the bodies of their kingly dead. Today it not only represents
the most important agricultural industry of the Colony, having long
since surpassed rubber as the premier product, but it has an almost
bewildering variety of uses. It is food, drink and shelter. Out of the
trunk the native extracts his wine; from the fruit, and this includes
the kernel, are obtained oil for soap, salad dressing and margarine; the
leaves provide a roof for the native houses; the fibre is made into
mats, baskets or strings for fishing