Dress 176
Central African Pygmies 182
Women Making Pottery 190
The Congo Pickaninny 190
The Heart of the Equatorial Forest 198
Natives Piling Wood 204
A Wood Post on the Congo 204
Residential Quarters at Alberta 210
The Comte de Flandre 210
A Typical Oil Palm Forest 216
Bringing in the Palm Fruit 216
A Specimen of Cicatrization 220
A Sankuru Woman Playing Native Draughts 220
The Belgian Congo 224
Thomas F. Ryan 228
Jean Jadot 236
Emile Francqui 242
A Belle of the Congo 246
Women of the Batetelas 246
Fishermen on the Sankuru 254
The Falls of the Sankuru 254
A Congo Diamond Mine 260
How the Mines Are Worked 260
Gravel Carriers at a Congo Mine 266
Congo Natives Picking out Diamonds 266
Washing out Gravel 272
Donald Doyle and Mr. Marcosson 272
The Park at Boma 278
A Street in Matadi 278
A General View of Matadi 282

AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE

AN AFRICAN ADVENTURE

CHAPTER I—SMUTS

I

Turn the searchlight on the political and economic chaos that has followed the Great War and you find a surprising lack of real leadership. Out of the mists that enshroud the world welter only three commanding personalities emerge. In England Lloyd George survives amid the storm of party clash and Irish discord. Down in Greece Venizelos, despite defeat, remains an impressive figure of high ideals and uncompromising patriotism. Off in South Africa Smuts gives fresh evidence of his vision and authority.

Although he was Britain's principal prop during the years of agony and disaster, Lloyd George is, in the last analysis, merely an eloquent and spectacular politician with the genius of opportunism. One reason why he holds his post is that there is no one to take his place,—another commentary on the paucity of greatness. There is no visible heir to Venizelos. Besides, Greece is a small country without international touch and interest. Smuts, youngest of the trio, looms up as the most brilliant statesman of his day and his career has just entered upon a new phase.

He is the dominating actor in a drama that not only affects the destiny of the whole British Empire, but has significance for every civilized nation. The quality of striking contrast has always been his. The one-time Boer General, who fought Roberts and Kitchener twenty years ago, is battling with equal tenacity for the integrity of the Imperial Union born of that war. Not in all history perhaps, is revealed a more picturesque situation than obtains in South Africa today. You have the whole Nationalist movement crystallized into a single compelling episode. In a word, it is contemporary Ireland duplicated without violence and extremism.

I met General Smuts often during the Great War. He stood out as the most intellectually alert, and in some respects the most distinguished figure among the array of nation-guiders with whom I talked, and I interviewed them all. I saw him as he sat in the British War Cabinet when the German hosts were sweeping across the Western Front, and when the German submarines were making a shambles of the high seas. I heard him speak with persuasive force on