gmented company, with the canoes
dangerously deep in the water, with tom-toms beating, bells ringing,
bugles sounding and people shouting, we arrived at Yakoma about 5 p.m.
on October 15th thus completing a voyage along the whole length of the
Ubangi river.

CHAPTER VII.

Yakoma to Djabir.

Yakoma is built on the banks of the Uele just before it joins with the
Bomu to form the Ubangi. The voyage up that river from its entrance into
the Congo to its source here occupied seven weeks of which half the
time, however, was spent in State Posts. Canoe travelling is terribly
tiring, although one merely sits still in a hammock chair all day, and
it has not been by any means comfortable camping in the forest during or
after the daily tornado. Still the trip has been very interesting for
this is one of the least known parts of the world and the people are
probably the least civilised.

This experience brought home the fact with something like a shock that
human nature is much the same everywhere and that if the savage leads
the life practically of an animal, he is at the same time not very much
unlike modern civilised man. He does not wear clothes, but he is very
vain and adorns himself with beads and bangles, his hair dressing
requiring hours of patient labour. He is often as pleased at being
photographed as a young fashionable beauty and, if a warrior, is as
proud of the paint which shows he has killed some one in battle, as a
soldier is of his medals. He is frankly commercial in his dealings and
as anxious to say what he thinks will please his guest as the most
tactful of society's hostesses. He is as keen to win in a canoe race as
any undergrad in his college boat and is a genuine and true sportsman.
He is very jealous as a husband and devoted as a father, characteristics
common both to animals and to the most intellectual of men. He is, as a
Chief, by no means hard on his subjects although his punishments are
barbarous and his sense of justice not greatly developed. He eats human
flesh but not the diseased livers of geese and he prefers his meat
decomposing as some like their game. He takes no more thought for the
morrow than many civilised people who live from hand to mouth without
considering the future and finally he sees the world from his point of
view and has little desire to discuss that of others. Mr. Van Luttens
the Chef du Poste kindly meets us and places a house at our disposal. We
then read our mail,