he glaring
sun alongside the road and cursed fate. Nelson spent his time eating all
the available food in sight. Finally, at three o'clock Moody gave up and
said, "We'll have to make the rest of this trip in a teapoy."

A teapoy is usually a hammock slung on a pole carried on the shoulders
of natives. We sent a runner in to Robison, who came back with two
teapoys and a squad of forty blacks to transport us. The "teapoy boy,"
as he is called, is as much a part of the African scheme of life as a
driver or a chauffeur is in America. He must be big, strong, and sound
of wind, because he is required to go at a run all the time. For any
considerable journey each teapoy has a squad of eight men who alternate
on the run without losing a step. They always sing as they go.

I had never ridden in a teapoy before and now I began a continuous trip
in one which lasted eight hours. Night fell almost before we got started
and it was a strange sensation to go sailing through the silent black
woods and the excited villages where thousands of naked persons of all
sizes turned out to see the show. After two hours I began to feel as if
I had been tossed up for a week in an army blanket. The wrist watch that
I had worn throughout the war and which had withstood the fiercest shell
shocks and bombardments, was jolted to a standstill. After the fourth
hour I became accustomed to the movement and even went to sleep for a
while. Midnight brought us to Kabambaie and the banks of the Kasai,
where I found food and sanctuary at a Forminiere post. Here the
thousands of tons of freight that come up the river from Dima by
steamer and which are carried by motor trucks, ox teams, and on the
heads of natives to this point, are placed on whale-boats and sent up
the river to Tshikapa.

Before going to bed I sent a runner to Tshikapa to notify Donald Doyle,
Managing Engineer of the Forminiere in the field, that I was coming and
to send a motor car out to meet me. I promised this runner much
_matabeesh_, which is the African word for a tip, if he would run the
whole way. The distance through the jungle was exactly seventy-two miles
and he covered it, as I discovered when I reached Tshikapa, in exactly
twenty-six hours, a remarkable feat. The _matabeesh_ I bestowed, by the
way, was three francs (about eighteen cents) and the native regarded it
as a princely gift because it amounted to nearly half a month's wages.

By this time my confidence in the African ji