Willmar tribune. [volume] (Willmar, Minn.) 1895-1931, 1910-07-06
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" in ones bed. At Lambarene
was writing some letters to
send by native canoe to the coast to
catch the European steamer. I was
seated on the veranda Of the post.
Overhead was a Towering frangipant
tree, its blossoms beautiful and heavy
with perfume. Before me stretched
the Ogowe river. Natives passed in
their dug-out canoes, their paddles
hardly disturbing the surface of the
water. Suddenly something snapped
over my head. I was startled and
pushed back my chair. On the ground
crawling at my feet was cobra, one
Of the most venomous snakes in the
world! There is no antidote for its
sting. My servant had seen the
snake swing itself from the Towering
tree and poise its body ready to
spring. He quickly leaped for the
branch of the tree on which the snake
was poised and snapped it off. The
snake was thrown violently to the
ground and soon dispatched.
Another time one of my paddlers
was pushing my canoe out from the
bank. Suddenly he disappeared.
When he reappeared he was minus
his leg from his knee down. A croc-
odile had bitten it off,
It is. an ordinary occurrence for a
leopard to steal native child from
camp fire around which many adults
are smoking and talking.
Wild animals can be guarded
against. But there is no escape from
insects and vermin. They spell just
plain hell for the white man. Reaches
fly and are as ravenous as jackals.
They eat ones clothing, and qevour
even corks of bottles.
White ants are also exceedingly
voracious. What looks like sturdy
fallen tree proves to be only mere
shell. It has been eaten out by white
ants.
The Driver ants are the scavengers
Of the jungle. Unlike the white ants,
they eat only fatty matter. I had
brood after brood of wild chickens
eaten by these tiny insects. They
have been known to sting to death
both natives and white men, and to
pick their bones as clean as any vul-
ture or jackal Woe to the man who
awakens not at their first sting. He
never wakens again.
These ants travel in colonies
amounting to millions. It takes days
for colony to pass a given point
They travel very quickly and always
have an objective point. They have
generals, captains and guards, and
their march is businesslike and in
telligent. They dig bitches and build
bridges and tunnels. They make
straight for their goal-a dead animal,
some palm oil nuts, chicken house,
or sleeping human beings.
| There is chance of recovery from
malaria, blackwater fever, smallpox
and even leprosy, but in the districts
infested with the tsetse fly, once inoc.
| ulated with the germs of sleep sick.
ness, there is no cure.
| A horrid thing! I have seen natives
lie blinking in the torrid sun, eaten
almost alive with insects and hungry
but they haven't the energy to- move
out of the sun, to chase away the in.
'sects or to reach out or ask for food
With eyes sinking deeper day by day
into their sockets, with flesh disap.
pearing and bones appearing, they
simply fade into eternity.
Although every government with
possessions in Africa has sent CT
eminent psychologists to try to Learn
something of this dreadful malady
yet very little has been learned, ex
cept that it is absolutely fatal and
that white man is liable to infec
:tion. 1t was. at first claimed thai
Europeans were immune from the
germs of trypanosomniasis- med
tcal term for the disease-but re
searches have proved that the white
man is just as liable to it as the black