ns. While the wood-boys were getting
fuel at a native post, Carrie and I went ashore to take a walk and visit
a chief who had once been in Belgium. When we got back to the boat we
found that all the natives had suspended work and were listening to an
impassioned speech by one of the black wheelmen. All these boats have
native pilots. This boy, who only wore a loin cloth, was urging his
fellows not to work so hard. Among other things he said:

"The white man eats big food and takes a big sleep in the middle of the
day and you ought to do the same thing. The company that owns this boat
has much money and you should all be getting more wages."

Carrie stopped the harangue, fined the pilot a week's pay, and the men
went back to work, but the poison had been planted. This illuminating
episode is just one of the many evidences of industrial insurgency that
I found in Africa from the moment I struck Capetown. In the Rand gold
mining district, for example, the natives have been organized by British
agitators and it probably will not be long before Central Africa has the
I. W. W. in its midst! Certainly the "I Won't Works" already exist in
large numbers.

This essentially modern spirit was only one of the many surprises that
the Congo native disclosed. Another was the existence of powerful secret
societies which have codes, "grips," and pass-words. Some antedate the
white man, indulge in human sacrifice, and have branches in a dozen
sections. Although Central Africa is a land where the husband can stray
from home at will, the "lodge night" is thus available as an excuse for
domestic indiscretion.

The most terrible of these orders is the Society of the Leopard, formed
to provide a novel and devilish method of disposing of enemies. The
members wear leopard skins or spotted habits and throttle their foes
with a glove to which steel blades are affixed. The victim appears to
have been killed by the animal that cannot change its spots. To make the
illusion complete, the ground where the victim has lain is marked with a
stick whose end resembles the feet of the leopard.

The leopard skin has a curious significance in the Congo. For occasions
where the white man takes an oath on the Bible, the savage steps over
one of these skins to swear fealty. If two chiefs have had a quarrel and
make up, they tear a skin in two and throw the pieces into the river, to
show that the feud is rent asunder. It corresponds to the pipe of peace
of th