CHAPTER III. Vegetation, Climate, and People.

While these slave raids in Congo are things of the past, a mild domestic slavery exists among the natives. In most cases the slaves are more like feudal retainers or serfs. A man of means invests his money in slaves, and thereby becomes more independent, for his slave retainers can support him in difficulties with his neighbours. It frequently happens that he builds a stockade at a little distance from the town in which he has been brought up, and this becomes the nucleus of a new town. In the latter end of the rainy season and the beginning of the ‘dries,’ they will cut nianga grass, the long six-foot blades of which spring up out of the ground, and have no stem or nodes. This grass is dried and used for the covering of the huts. Stems of palm fronds are also trimmed and split. Papyrus is brought from the marshes, and strips of its green skin twisted into string, with which they tie together securely the posts and rafters, so that they may stand the strain of the fierce tornadoes which sweep the country.