ostage houses, its
chain gangs, its _chicottes_, its nameless crimes against the human
body, its baskets of dried hands held up in tribute to the Belgian
blackguard.

III

THE CAPITAL OF THE CONGO

Leopold's "shop" has its front door at Banana. Its house flag is a
golden star on a blue background. Banana is the port of entry to the
Congo. You have, no doubt, seen many ports of Europe--Antwerp,
Hamburg, Boulogne, Lisbon, Genoa, Marseilles. Banana is the port of
entry to a country as large as Western Europe, and while the imports
and exports of Europe trickle through all these cities, the commerce
of the Congo enters and departs entirely at Banana. You can then
picture the busy harbor, the jungle of masts, the white bridges and
awnings of the steamers. By the fat funnels and the flags you can
distinguish the English tramps, the German merchantmen, the French,
Dutch, Italian, Portuguese traders, the smart "liners" from
Liverpool, even the Arab dhows with bird-wing sails, even the steel,
four-masted schooners out of Boston, U.S.A. You can imagine the
toiling lighters, the slap-dash tenders, the launches with shrieking
whistles.

Of course, you suspect it is not a bit like that. But were it for
fourteen countries the "open door" to twenty millions of people,
that is how it might look.

Instead, it is the private entrance to the preserves of a private
individual. So what you really see is, on the one hand, islands of
mangrove bushes, with their roots in the muddy water; on the other,
Banana, a strip of sand and palm trees without a wharf, quay,
landing stage, without a pier to which you could make fast anything
larger than a rowboat.

In a canoe naked natives paddle alongside to sell fish; a peevish
little man in a sun hat, who, in order to save Leopold three
salaries, holds four port offices, is being rowed to the gangway; on
shore the only other visible inhabitant of Banana, a man with no
nerves, is disturbing the brooding, sweating silence by knocking the
rust off the plates of a stranded mud-scow. Welcome to our city!
Welcome to busy, bustling Banana, the port of entry of the Congo
Free State.

[Illustration: The Facilities for Landing at Banana, the Port of
Entry to the Congo, Are Limited.]

In a canoe we were paddled to the back yard of the cafe of Madame
Samuel, and from that bower of warm beer and sardine tins trudged
through the sun up one side of Banana and down the other. In between
the two