Instead, it is the private entrance to the preserves of a private
individual. So what you really see is, on the one hand, islands of
mangrove bushes, with their roots in the muddy water; on the other,
Banana, a strip of sand and palm trees without a wharf, quay,
landing stage, without a pier to which you could make fast anything
larger than a rowboat.
In a canoe naked natives paddle alongside to sell fish; a peevish
little man in a sun hat, who, in order to save Leopold three
salaries, holds four port offices, is being rowed to the gangway; on
shore the only other visible inhabitant of Banana, a man with no
nerves, is disturbing the brooding, sweating silence by knocking the
rust off the plates of a stranded mud-scow. Welcome to our city!
Welcome to busy, bustling Banana, the port of entry of the Congo
Free State.
[Illustration: The Facilities for Landing at Banana, the Port of
Entry to the Congo, Are Limited.]
In a canoe we were paddled to the back yard of the cafe of Madame
Samuel, and from that bower of warm beer and sardine tins trudged
through the sun up one side of Banana and down the other. In between
the two paths were the bungalows and gardens of forty white men and
two white women. Many of the gardens, as was most of Banana, were
neglected, untidy, littered with condensed-milk tins. Others, more
carefully tended, were laid out in rigid lines. With all tropical
nature to draw upon, nothing had been imagined.
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