Catholic Fathers of the Scheut Mission.
The children are trained to become wood-workers, machinists, painters,
and carpenters. It is the Booker Washington idea transplanted in the
jungle. The Scheut Missionaries and their Jesuit colleagues are doing
an admirable service throughout the Congo. Some of them are infused with
the spirit that animated Father Damien. Time, distance, and isolation
count for naught with them. It is no uncommon thing to encounter in the
bush a Catholic priest who has been on continuous service there for
fifteen or twenty years without a holiday. At Luluaburg lives a Mother
Superior who has been in the field for a quarter of a century without
wandering more than two hundred miles from her field of operations.

V

Now for the last stage of the Congo River trip. Like so many of my other
experiences in Africa it produced a surprise. One morning when we were
about two hundred miles north of Kinshassa I heard the whir of a motor
engine, a rare sound in those parts. I thought of aeroplanes and
instinctively looked up. Flying overhead toward Coquilhatville was a
300-horse power hydroplane containing two people. Upon inquiry I
discovered that it was one of four machines engaged in carrying
passengers, mail, and express between Kinshassa and Coquilhatville.

The campaign against the Germans in East Africa proved the
practicability of aeroplanes in the tropics. The Congo is the first of
the Central African countries to dedicate aviation to commercial uses
and this precedent is likely to be extensively followed. Fifteen
hydroplanes have been ordered for the Congo River service which will
eventually be extended to Stanleyville. Only those who have endured the
agony of slow transport in the Congo can realize the blessing that air
travel will confer.

I was naturally curious to find out just what the African native thought
of the aeroplane. The moment that the roar of the engine broke the
morning silence, everybody on the boat rushed to some point of vantage
to see the strange sight. The blacks slapped each other on the shoulder,
pointed at the machine, and laughed and jabbered. Yet when my secretary
asked a big Baluba if he did not think that the aeroplane was a
wonderful thing the barbarian simply grunted and replied, "White man can
do anything." He summed up the native attitude toward his conqueror. I
believe that if a white man performed the most astounding feat of magic
or necromancy the native woul