Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1912-09-18
PRISONER IN AFRICAN WILDs.'
Missionary Held for Three
Years by u Negro Napoleon.
(Boston Transcript

After 23 years peril in the heart
or Africa, much Of the time a pris-
oner In Il great black Babylon where
nameless horrors were committed
every day, where were hills Of skulls
and where patches Of slaves were
butchered for the mere JOY of the
sight Of blood, Daniel Crawford, a
missionary connected with the Plym-
outh Brethren, has returned to Brit
ain on furlough and has just been
given an official reception at his ma
tive town Of Greenook.
How he penetrated from the west
ern coast to the great Katanga
try, in the southwest corner Of the
Congo country, north Of Rhodesia,
forms a strange chapter IL his life
story. At first he was with two
other Observation-Disclosures Arnot and
Mr.. Lane tbrother OF w. X. Lane, the
well-known Free Churchman)-and,
he said to a representative Of the
London Chronicle: 1--WE had to bore
our way in. For hundreds of miles
Africa Is blocked by impudent chiefs
of h Rob Roy type, whose only
motto is Own up and pay up You
go 10, II, 20 stupid little miles, pei
haps you merely cross a river, and
another Rob Roy McGregor Africa
Il meets you with extortionate de-
mands. He looks at your jacket and
wants your jacket; he looks at the
shirt underneath and he wants your
shirt"
The two missionaries whom Mr..
Crawford accompanied soon pen
trated as far as they desired, and to
solve the difficulty of getting right
into the heart of the interior. Mr.,
crawford attached himself to a
slaver's caravan. Along the coast"
ne says, there are a number of these
Portuguese s~lavers, but they employ a
toll of black cut-throats, who load the
ravan up with powder and flint
ock guns, and over the hills and far
away they go on their pacific pene-
tration OF Central Africa
And 1t was then | saw the hor-
rors of the slave trade. All along
h path we saw the '%shackles and the
yokes of slaves who had died on the
way down to the coast. To prevent
the slaves escaping at night the legs
Of each four of them are tightly
punched together in wooden shack
les. Dozens Of shackles were found
along the same route in 1909; not
I'D shacklns, but green shackles still
wet With the sap OF tho tree Though
Brjtatp prevents slaves heinz shippad
10 Jamaica or elsewhere In Africa,
there ja always any amount or glny-
cry up the back path. Africa lives
on slave labor.
1T was the nightmare of my life
In the Interior. At all hours Of the
night natives came to me saying Sir.
sir, we are all killed. and they would
tell me of the attacks by the slavers,
OF women dragged off, Of men killed.
OFTEN the slavers were led by white
' ''>H 'pSi IL nuIIISS, ana
there lay the difficulty. | have got
dates, name Of town wiped out, names
OF all the victims, but | have not got
he name Of the Portuguese leader.
These men put on the mask of a false
name, and under the shield of it they
do the devils work in Central Az
RIGA"
The caravan to which Mr.. Craw-
ford attached himself to get into the
interior, however, was bound for a
place where there were always slaves
to be obtained cheap-the capital of
the great Emperor Mushidi.
Years BEFORE" says Mr.. Craw-
ford, "Mushidi journeyed into the in
terror with his wife, Kapapa, and two
slaves, total Of four, and this terrible
quartette smashed up all the tribes
OF Central Africa. Mushidi was a
veritable black Napoleon Of Central
Africa. His brain worked with the
precision of a machine. Tribe after
tribe fell under his sway, and thus
was evolved a great black Babylon,
all the tribes formed a seeth-
ing mob and where slaves poured in
by hundreds and thousands.
1T was a city of scores of thou
sands Of people, certainly over 1907
600. And there for years | was kent
practically a prisoner, for Mushidi
refused to let me go. 1t was a case
OF Will you walk into my p%arlor?'
said the spider to the fly. Partly, per-