The first port enroute to Brazzaville (the capital of French Congo and today of Congo) that the Vassals stopped at was Dakar, and instantly Vassal was critical. Though her husband (who had visited the port twenty years earlier) was impressed at the progress and improvement of the port since then, Vassal saw Dakar as a "sterile" dusty port, without any of the "life, colour, and comfort" of the Vietnamese and Chinese ports. [2] It was a place where all, white and black alike, did not seem to be working or engaging in business.
For Vassal it only got worse. Whereas the Senegalese were somewhat civilized, the Congolese were "incompetent imbecils" [sic] who were "on the lowest scale of the African native." [3] Not knowing how to watch animals or how to garden, the Congolese was also quite ignorant in a myriad of other ways that astonished Vassal. Incorrectly assuming that even "primitive" peoples like the Congolese would know how to fish and to swim, she was dumbfounded that they were deathly afraid of the Congo River and thus were ignorant of how to fish or swim. [4] (Ironically, the French traditionally did not swim much either, but this piece of information is decidedly absent from the travelogue.) This astonishment was only topped by another later on in the book, when Vassal was incredulous that the Congolese did not even wear loin-cloths or care for their hair, two basic actions that she felt differentiated a human from being an animal. [5] There were many results of this complete ignorance. Though in favor of missionary activity in Africa, Vassal noted that proselytizing would not do much good because African, and particularly Congolese, minds were "empty of any sort of religious idea or conviction." [6] This lack of awareness of right and wrong, Vassal further contended, led the Congolese to often practice cannibalism and other "ghastly" practices. Though few Congolese lived to be old, those who did were not revered but rather often sacrificed and eaten by the tribal community. [7]
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