Lost Worlds Read Online Free Page A

of four million. The locals call it Boubelleville—Trash Can City! A remarkably accurate description in spite of a patina of modernity in the form of broad boulevards and modest high rises. All for show, though. The truth lies beyond the gleaming towers.
    The jungle was edging in. Miles and miles of it in all directions tumbling to a ragged halt along torn, timber-strewn shores. Might not be such a bad journey after all. The cabin was a hellhole, but what the heck, I would stay on the deck.
    I was wondering if the sun was melting my brain. Couldn’t seem to focus on anything serious. All that noise and crush and panic had unloosed some idiot in my skull. I needed some relief. A beer first and then maybe someone to talk to.
    “Hello.”
    I looked up and saw a man about forty or so with graying hair, a lean face closely shaved, wearing a blue T-shirt and a crisply pressed pair of white safari shorts. (And carrying a generous supply of bottled beer.)
    “I think you would enjoy a drink?”
    I thanked him, maybe too profusely.
    “May I sit with you?” he asked, and smiled.
    “Please. I could do with some company.”
    Paul was a French citizen who had lived in Zaire most of his adult life (“since I discovered African women”). After the normal introductory chitchat I asked him to tell me a little about this strange and mysterious country. Vaguely, from shards of schoolboy history, I remembered tales of atrocities and unbelievable cruelties inflicted on the Congo nation by Belgium’s King Leopold II. But Paul gave these tales flesh and blood. Too much blood.
    “It was possibly the worst example of colonial rape ever inflicted on an indigenous people,” he said. “Even today I have friends in Belgium who will not talk—they refuse to discuss this period of their history. It is still hard for them to imagine such things as were done. I think they would prefer to forget. You see, Leopold was—ah, wait a minute—I am going too fast. Let’s begin with the Portuguese. One Portuguese man. A navigator, Diogo Cao, who discovered the Congo River in 1482. He thought it was just another bay and then found a river of such a size that it pushed out fresh water thirty, forty miles into the Atlantic. He could not understand a river of that enormity. We now know it is the fifth largest river in the world—almost five thousand kilometers long. Do you remember the others?”
    I hadn’t expected the question and dredged my mind for the answers: “Er—the Amazon. Yes, certainly the Amazon. The Nile…the Mississippi, and…”
    “The Yangtze, my friend. Never forget the Yangtze.”
    “Right.”
    “So—Signor Cao met the people—the Bakongo tribe—and sailed upriver as far as the Caldron of Hell—a very difficult part of those rapids that fill the last four hundred kilometers of the river below Kinshasa—the old Leopoldville. The things he offered them—gifts, education, the world’s most powerful religion, and personal friendship with King John of Portugal—seemed to please the Bakongo King, Nzinga, and what happened in the early fifteen hundreds was possibly one of the best relationships between an African and a European nation. We French—the British, the Spanish—we all had our dreams of riches and power, but Portugal for a while—well, they seemed happy just to convert, educate, and help the development of the Congo without destroying it.”
    “That didn’t last too long, though. Not from what I understand.”
    “Well—you are so right. Portugal became greedy—they saw how rich all the other colonial powers were becoming—and they joined the slave trade. And other things too. Then the Arabs moved in from the Middle East. Other countries got involved. Many of the native kingdoms were destroyed. Pirates, profiteers, planters—everyone tried to grab a bit of the Congo. Your Dr. Livingstone came too—he talked about ‘taming, educating, and Christianizing these savages of darkest Africa.’ And the tribes