Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

FAR, YET NOT FARTHEST, IN 29
going to ship them over to San Thome for the cultivation
of cocoa ?
Look, then, at this caravan, taking nearly three hours
to march past, a horde of eight hundred souls, all doomed
to exile for life. Some tottering old men there, mere
shrivelled sacks of bones who at any moment may
need to lie down by the roadside and die. Dozens of
women there, staggering along with little babies born
and unborn, for this famished " hungry country " demands
a rushing speed for the caravan. Item: One mother,
the grief-Hnes furrowing her face, goaded on with baby
just born that day by the roadside, maternity conval-
escence, say, one hour and a fraction. Saddest sight of
all, crowds of little emaciated boys and girls all sold for
a song in the Congo State, the little legs at last giving out.
Yet only four months before every one of them had
radiant youth bubbling in his veins. Who can forget
that, Lubans born and bred as they are, these same little
souls sing a song in their own country about the joys of
a jaded piccaninny on the trail when nearing home at
last ?
" If toiling on a journey dreary
A little toddling child is weary,
One whisper of the magic * Home,'
How strong the little legs become
No longer weariness they feel,
For they are stifif like bars of steel."
But here they are, far from home, that long wriggling
horror of a slave track before and behind them, so thin
and hollow-eyed you can only think of them as a moan