STANLEY POOL, Feb. 22nd, 1907.
[DEAR MOTHER:]
When you get this, I will be on my way to London. The
rest of my stay here will be on board two boats,
touching at the banks of the Kasai river. One I now am on
takes me up and another takes me down. I will see a great
deal that is strange and it is very interesting. Yesterday,
for example, only an hour before our train reached Gongolo
Station, there were three elephants that wandered across the
track. We were very disappointed not to have seen them. At
the mission house on the way up, I brought the first ice the
mission boys had seen and when I put a piece in the hand of
one, he yelled and danced about as though it were a coal. The
higher up you go the tougher it gets. Back in the jungle, one
can only imagine what it is like. Here all the white men have
black wives, and the way the whip is used on the men is very
different from the lower congo. The boat is about as large as
a touring car, with all the machinery exposed. I am very
comfortable though, with my bed and camp chair, and, books to
read, when one gets tired of this great, dirty river. I,
expect to see hippopotamuses and many crocodiles and to learn
something of the "atrocities" by hearsay. To see for oneself,
would take months. I return from the Kasai district by a boat
like this one, burning wood and with a stern wheel, reaching
Leopoldville, this place, about the 12th of March, and sailing
on the
Albertville for Southampton on the 19th of March.
So
I should be in London and so very near you by the 8th of
April. Of course, if I take a later boat from here, I will be
just that much later. I am perfectly well, never better. No
fever, no "tired feeling" good appetite, in spite of awful
tough food. From this place money cannot be used and I carry
a bag of salt and rolls of cloth. For a bottle of salt you
get a fowl or a turkey, for a tablespoonful an egg, or a bunch
of fruit. When you write be sure and tell me
[In the Congo, 1907.]
all your plans for the summer; that is, after you have been
to see us. My dearest love to you all.
DICK.
