Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 November 1890 — A BARRIER BETWEEN THEM. [ARTICLE]

A BARRIER BETWEEN THEM.

Hostile Neighbors ia Africa Who Have Established a No Man’s Land. A little British expedition recently steamed far up the Benue branch of foe Niger River in a small-Steam launch and finally entered a tributary of the Benue and explored a region which no white man has ever visited before. The most interesting thing about their journey was foe curious experience they had with the natives. They had been passing for a good while through a region that was inhabited by Moslem blacks, fruits of foe father severe methods of conversion employed by the Arab invaders of the Soudan. The country was very fertile, and the people were numerous: but all of a sudden, though the country still wore its usual aspect, and the soil was apparently rich, population entirely ceased. For a stretch of over twenty miles not a hut was to be seen, nor was a single sign of human life anywhere observed. The expedition wondered at this remarkable state of affairs, for the country was certainly inviting, and they could not imagine why it had no inhabitants. All at once, however, as they rounded a bend in the river, they saw big* crowds of natives running down the sides of the hills to the bank. They brandished their spears at the white men in the little boat, and told them to go back for they wanted no Moslerp, in their country. There was an interpreter on the vessel who succeeded in convincing the natives that the visitors were not Moslems, and thereupon the people became quite friendly. Then the reason for this curious lack of population was ascertained. When the tribes who had been converted to Islam found that the natives near them were j ust as strong as they were, the spread of their religion in that ■ direction abruptly ceased, but these heathen people and foe Moslem converts near them couln not live at peace with one another. It was finally decided that, as they could not be good neighbors, a stretch of country should be placed between them where no one should live, and in that way they expected to get along with less bloodshed. So all foe people who in habited this fertile region, about twenty miles wide, packed up their little belongings and moved away, and this stretch of country thus came to be without a single inhabitant. Today it is a No Man’s Laud, and the only reason is that the people who are neighbors there cannot live on friendly terms, and, tired of fighting, hay e put this barrier between them.