The people also use mats for their beds; but they do not put the mats on the ground.  They tie them to a frame raised a little above the ground.

[Illustration:  Kongo Negroes at a Mission School.]

These negroes also make baskets, bowls, pots, and wooden spoons.  The bowls and pots they make out of clay.

It is very warm all the year round in the Kongo Valley.  So the people wear very little clothing.  They rub their bodies with palm oil.

They have a funny way of wearing their hair.  While they are young their hair is braided.  Then it is twisted into all sorts of knots and shapes.  They do not untwist it, but keep it so always.  They think these queer knots and shapes are very pretty.

[Illustration:  A Kongo Village.]

The women do all the hard work.  They cook the food.  They do the other housework.  They plant the corn and beans.

[Illustration:  Headdress of Kongo Women.]

The men spend a great deal of time in fishing.  They also hunt and kill elephants to get their tusks for ivory.  There are many elephants in the Kongo Valley.  They roam about in large herds.  It must be a hard task to kill an elephant!

One of the tribes in the Kongo Valley is called the Bangala tribe.  The men are tall and strong and fierce.  They are always fighting with other tribes.  This makes the other tribes very much afraid of them.

The negroes of this tribe have a strange way of making friends with a white man.  They will do him no harm if he is willing to be their “blood brother.”

This is the way they make a white man their blood brother.  The black man takes a limb of palm tree which has two branches.  With one branch in his hand, he falls on the ground before the white man.  The white man takes hold of the other branch.  Then the black man splits the limb into two parts with his knife.

After this is done, an old man of the tribe comes to the white man and the black man.  He puts the white man’s arm over the black man’s arm.  When their arms are together, he makes a small cut in each arm.  He makes this cut to draw blood.  Then the old man puts salt and the dust of banana leaves into the blood, and rubs both arms together.  The black man and the white man are then blood brothers.

These people have also a strange way of taking care of their canoes.  When they are not using them, they keep them under water.  They say that the canoes will last longer if kept under water.

THE AMAZON VALLEY.

Perhaps you have heard of the Amazon River.  It is the largest river in the world.  It is four thousand miles long, and more than fifty miles wide where it flows into the sea.  This river is in Brazil.  Brazil is far south of us.

[Illustration:  Amazon Indians.]

There are great forests along the banks of this river.  They run back from the river for hundreds of miles.  They are the largest forests in the world.