From half a million to a million of lives are annually sacrificed in the slave trade, and as many more in all probability in intertribal wars and contests. Physically a land of sunshine and beauty and redundant life, it is spiritually a land of darkness, deformity, and death.

In Ouroua only two punishments are known, mutilation and the penalty of death. Both are much in use, but especially the former. For the least offence the chief and his lieutenants cut off a finger, a lip, a portion of the ear or of the nose. For more serious offences, they cut off the hands, etc.

Mazindeh wished to punish the man according to A-Zandeh law by cutting off a finger.... I saw a man who had been punished by the loss of his finger and of another important member. A Malingdeh told me he knew about twenty men who had been similarly punished.

If slavery were abolished, all criminals would probably be put to death or mutilated.

King Wemba, near Tanganyika, finding the wooden drumsticks too harsh for his ears, cut off the hands of his slaves so that they might beat the drums with their stumps.

The offender was lucky if he escaped with instant death, for Msiri delighted in diabolical refinements of cruelty. Quite minor crimes were punished by the lopping off of a hand or the docking of an ear. In fact Msiri practised mutilation almost as extensively as Kasongo.

Mr. Giraud noticed some men whose noses or ears had been cut off. Mkewe’s six drummers had a thumb on each hand but no fingers.... Mr. Giraud says that everywhere the Bemba people practise these barbarous customs. First the fingers and toes are cut off.

The welcome that I have received and the facilities accorded me everywhere in the course of my journey through the Eastern Province have made this journey very agreeable. This is now the third day that I have received the hospitality of this post, and before leaving it, which I expect to do to-morrow morning, I consider that I must write and tell you how happy I have been to have had the opportunity of making this most interesting journey. In the course of my tour I have been much struck by the order which has been established, and by the real progress accomplished. When the position of the country under the Arab domination is recalled, and when the relatively brief number of years since the termination of the military operations rendered necessary by the revolts is taken into account, the progress that has been made is nothing less than marvellous. If in spite of such numerous difficulties so much has been done, I am sure that when the railway towards Ponthierville has been completed the progress will prove more rapid still.—May 31, 1903.

We arrived to-day at New Antwerp in order to take our farewell before leaving for England. I much regret that we are not able to see you. I desire to thank you for the kind interest and consideration for the mission at Upoto which you[47] have always displayed.

The condition of the natives is much improved, all the villages of the district can be visited in absolute safety, and I beg to congratulate you on the tranquillity of the district of which you are the Commissary-General.—March 14, 1903.

The dwellings for soldiers and labourers are numerous in Kabinda. They are symmetrically arranged and separated from one another by wide alleys from 10 to 15 metres across. Each black family has a separate house sufficiently large, divided into two rooms. Each dwelling is raised half a metre (nearly 20 inches) above the ground, and surrounded by a verandah one metre broad. The soil has been well beaten down, and the walls are whitened with lime. The roofing is without a ceiling, with a large opening admitting ventilation; each man sleeps on a bed raised one metre. The ground surrounding the post is formed into separate small gardens in which each soldier cultivates maize, manioc, etc.

All the villages around Kabinda are united to the post by wide and long avenues, well kept up and bordered by trees and pineapples. The natives greatly feel the effects of the neighbourhood of the white man, and make every effort to rival him in the maintenance, cleanliness, and prettiness of their villages. The houses are placed on an elevation, and are built in the same way as those of the soldiers with truly remarkable care and propriety. Each house has two or three rooms containing from 12 to 15 cubic metres, with good verandahs, and meets the prescribed hygienic conditions.

Large free intervals separate the dwellings from one another, and in them are the vegetable plantations.

A detail worthy of being pointed out is the great cleanliness of the natives of this region. During the course of my journey from the West Coast of Africa to Kabinda I remarked many things, and I ascertained that at Kabinda all the natives, in place of sleeping on the ground, have a raised bed, formed by means of flexible canes with coverlets, stuffs, and mosquito nets. There are houses that contain magnificent sarcophagi of truly artistic work.

Everywhere there are small pieces of furniture coarsely sculptured, but which reveal the artistic taste of this people and their progressive march towards civilisation. It must also be said that they have a marked desire to dress decently. In conclusion, they are, in my opinion, the first people I met in Africa who, without being spoilt by money, possess a relatively advanced degree of civilisation, and an hygienic system beyond dispute.

The fertility of the soil and the abundance of provisions of all kinds allow of changing the food of the soldier and the native. Their food generally consists of chickens, goats, wild animals, manioc, maize, vegetables, and various fruits. They feel the effects of this good nourishment. They are strong, robust, support fatigue well, and consequently give little hold to sickness.

On a hill close to the post a hospital has been constructed by the natives. It contains three large rooms separated from each other and containing 100 cubic metres.—February 21, 1904.

Though I have travelled by boat and on foot from Boma to Amadi and higher up to Surunga, calling at all the State stations; though I have visited many establishments, both Catholic and non-Catholic, as well as some stations of independent companies; though I have passed nights and days in my tent in the forest and in villages of the natives; though I have had ample opportunities of seeing much in my journeys as to how the natives are treated, I have never seen or heard of any of the atrocities with which the agents of the Free State are charged. On the contrary, one cannot but admire the wonderful progress that has been made in so short a time, the commendable way in which the natives are treated, the little work that is exacted of them, and the manner in which they are punctually paid for every service rendered or work done. The little work which is occasionally exacted of them by way of tax in porterage or otherwise is as nothing when compared with the immense benefits conferred upon them by the State. In fact the methods of the Belgian officers drew a highly complimentary eulogium from the Sirdar during his recent visit to the Enclave of Lado—methods which, he stated, might be followed with advantage by our English officers: “Messieurs,” said the Sirdar, “nous avons d’excellentes leçons devant nos yeux.”—March 31, 1904.

I went to the Congo last September as a member of an expedition of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, which was despatched especially to investigate sleeping sickness in the Congo, the same disease which so recently, as the public know, broke out in such virulent epidemic form in Uganda. For a considerable time I was in Leopoldville, which is the Bombay of the Congo—that is, everybody throughout the whole of the Congo goes through Leopoldville in order to reach Europe and the outer world. Hence you can quite understand that any one, like myself, for instance, stationed for a time in Leopoldville, must, if he take any trouble at all, come across all the officials from the whole of the Congo, who, from various causes, are bound at intervals to be in or passing through Leopoldville. Thus, whilst there I had excellent opportunities of finding out exactly what happens in that country, particularly as these men—that is, the officials of the Congo—are extremely ready to talk. Besides opportunities of acquiring information in that way, I have travelled on foot in the Belgian Congo State, and personally observed the condition of things which prevails there. I assure you that if I were to tell you all I know against the Congo Administration it would amount to a very little indeed compared with what I know in its favour. The credulousness of the British Government in respect of the Casement report is something marvellous. Casement travelled up the river in a missionary steamer, arm in arm with missionaries practically all the time, and obtained all his information from the river bank instead of personally investigating the various stories of outrage and mutilation which he received. It is the most astonishing thing that the British Government have given the Casement report so much credence.

The agitation now going on with respect to atrocities in the Congo is based on things that happened a long time ago. There is no doubt that in times gone by atrocities have occurred; but, thanks to the altered methods and conditions of administration, such things are not likely to recur. The basin of the Congo, mainly the Belgian Congo, is practically the sole rubber-producing area of the world. This territory also contains the lowest class of natives in the whole of Africa. The natives all over the East Coast—the Masai, the Nandi, the Kaverondo, the Bukedi, the Baris, the Madis, the Dinkas, the Shiluks, and others—stretching right away up to the Soudan, are all a magnificent class of Negro, a fighting people, a manly, upstanding people, who impressed me immensely. I have been through parts of all their territories, and they are indeed a magnificent set of people. Then you get towards the West Coast—the basin of the Niger, where I was for nearly two years, and you see a lower class of natives. On the Benue, where the present punitive expedition is operating in Niaiger, you have again a distinctly lower class of natives. Then, as you go farther South, and get into the Congo watershed, you come upon a still lower class of natives. The natives over large areas in the Congo are cannibals to the present day. They are a very low class of native indeed. That is the territory which the Belgians have so successfully opened up for the rubber trade. In that opening-up process they have had, as I say, to contend with absolutely the lowest class of natives in Africa at the present day. As you travel through the Congo you cannot help feeling—at all events any one like myself, who has been through the British tropical colonies—that the amount of general advancement and civilisation in the Congo Free State is far ahead as compared with our own. This is doubtless owing to the fact that the Belgians have made the natives work. The Belgians have gone on the principle, to begin with, that the native must be a participating element in the development and civilisation of the country—that is, that he must work with and for the white man, and thereby benefit not only the white man but himself. I was immensely impressed with the state of government and the advancement and general opening-up of the Congo, the more so as I can compare it with other districts under British control in which I have been. We do not attempt to make the native work, with the result that we do not get the benefit we should from our Protectorates. Uganda and British East Africa are far behind the Congo Free State. Not more than a third of Uganda is opened up to administrative control. I once spent ten months in Uganda, and visited every station in it, walking 2300 miles and returning down the Nile. The Belgians have got stations everywhere in the Congo practically, and most of the natives, except in one or two areas, are entirely under control. The Uganda native is a fat, lazy chap, who will do no work. There is no industry in Uganda. The Belgians pay the Congo natives for their labour. They realise that the native is a valuable asset in the country, and treat him accordingly. It is surely obvious that it is not to the interest of the Congo administrators to maim the native.

All the mutilations and cruelties which have been spoken of took place in the early days of the opening-up process to which the country has been subjected and before the railway was constructed. The men who have been guilty of the atrocities have not been Belgians in all cases. In many instances they have been Italians who have been appointed to the smaller outlying posts, the better and higher positions being kept for Belgians. These Italians and other foreigners who have been given the charge of outlying stations have in some cases perpetrated cruelties in times gone by. These men were not accustomed to exercise power, and this led them to ill-use the natives. That is how the atrocities such as these were originated. But that has all gone now; they are all cleared out. I have seen nineteen such men, chiefly Italians, in prison at Boma on charges of cruelty, which proves that the Belgians are doing their best to put a stop to the kind of thing complained of. The agitation that is now going on about atrocities is exaggerated out of all proportion to the amount of the atrocities that happened at any time. The Belgians are doing everything they can to supersede the men who have acted improperly in the past; they have appointed inspectors for different districts, and they have allowed inspectors appointed by the Italian Government and the Scandinavian Government to go out into the Congo for the purpose of keeping an eye on those of their own nationality in positions of responsibility and control in the Congo Free State. Things in the Congo now are very different to what they were even two or three years ago. The King of the Belgians has sent out Baron Dhanis—who had more to do with opening up the Congo in the early days than anybody else—to reorganise the whole military system of the Congo Free State. There are to be two or three large military centres in the Congo, and the soldiers will be much more highly trained and be more under control. Hitherto the small posts have recruited men from the surrounding villages, and given them a bit of uniform and a rifle, and they have gone about, supposed to be doing their duty, instead of which they have probably been ill-treating the natives. The whole thing will be changed now, however, for they will have a much more highly organised army and a much higher class of officer. It has been these unscrupulous foreigners—Italians, etc.—who have been guilty of the cruelties reported. Another proof of the endeavours to stop any existing abuses of administration is the fact that a Belgian officer who for many years held a high post in the Congo has recently been sent out by the King as Royal High Commissioner, to investigate all questions of maladministration and, particularly, payment of State employees and the natives for labour, with power there and then to rectify or alter any existing rules which he thinks might be amended in any part of the Congo, the territories of concessionary companies included. With regard to the mutilations in the Congo, described by Mr. Casement, I may tell you that only last year in Uganda I saw similar mutilations, which, it is well known, were done by the natives in Uganda, notably in King Mtesa’s day. In walking through Toro and Unyoro, I have seen men without noses, ears, and, frequently, without hands.

With regard to Lord Cromer’s assertion that in the Lado Enclave the natives have left the banks of the river and the immediate regions of the Belgian posts,—well, I have walked along the Nile from the Albert Nyanza into the Soudan, and visited the Belgian stations on the river, besides having seen a good deal of the natives on both banks. I feel sure that Lord Cromer is wrong when he states that the natives are leaving the Belgian side and going over to the Uganda side. The natives certainly had nothing to complain of, and certainly are not migrating across the river. As for there being no villages round Lado Enclave, the explanation is that there is for several months of the year absolutely no water and, therefore, necessarily no villages. But at many other places along the banks in the Lado Enclave there are large villages. I saw several thousand natives at Wadelai, employed by the Belgians in rebuilding the old fort of Emin Pasha, preparatory to making a large station there, and they seemed quite contented and happy, and worked like a hive of bees. The conclusion to which I am irresistibly driven as a disinterested observer is that the present administration of the Congo is not only free from cruelties, but is of the most complete and efficient description, and counts for the fullest commercial and industrial development of the Free State. I am sure that that administration is doing its level best in every way, from the highest to the lowest officer, to make the country prosperous, and the native happy and useful.—June 23, 1904.

Since I returned to England a few weeks ago I have read some correspondence in the Morning Post on the subject of the administration in the Congo State. I am an Englishman, and have during the last two years led an expedition of the Tanganyika Concessions (Limited), organised in Rhodesia to explore and search for minerals in the Katanga district of the Congo State. During the latter part of 1901 and the whole of 1902 sections of this expedition have explored and settled in the district of Katanga, and at the same time the representatives of the Special Katanga Committee have occupied and governed the country. It is almost impossible for one man to have intimate knowledge of more than a portion of the territory of the Congo Free State, and I can only claim to know a small and remote section. Still, seeing that so much attention has been directed of late to Belgian administration in the Congo, my experiences in that country may be of interest. It is, perhaps, necessary to explain that the Special Katanga Committee, the governing body in Brussels of the territories of Katanga, is composed of the representatives of an amalgamation between the separate interests of the Congo Free State Government and the Katanga Company. The former originally owned two-thirds, the latter one-third, of that portion of the Congo State. This administration is entirely Belgian, and the African staff is composed of a representative of the committee, whose headquarters are at Lukonzolwa, on Lake Mweru, and who occupies the position of administrator, and of numerous officials, civil and military, in charge of the various sections of the district and departments of the administration. The country is garrisoned by a large force of native troops, with European officers. My duties have confined me to the section of the district called the Upper Luapula Section, which borders on the south and east with Northern Rhodesia. I have visited the chief of that section, Mr. Vervloet, at his headquarters at Lukafu, and an officer of the Katanga force with a few soldiers has been attached to my expedition.

I have, therefore, had considerable opportunity on the spot of learning the instructions which the Special Committee give their officials, and how those instructions are carried out. I myself and many members of my expedition have become fairly intimate with the native inhabitants of large portions of this district, and have from time to time employed as carriers and miners several hundred labourers. That the natives of this country had never suffered ill-treatment from white men was evident to me from the time I entered the country. They showed no hesitation in working for my expedition and in bringing quantities of food to sell, and always seemed quite confident that fair payment would be given, both for labour and food. I have lived for many years in parts of Africa in which the native inhabitants were for the first time coming under the influence of European government, and where conditions rendered the aid of such government by native troops necessary. It is almost impossible constantly to restrain the tendency to oppress and ill-treat his less powerful countrymen which is inherent in the native soldier, and I do not believe that it ever happens that the advent of that form of government is unaccompanied by acts of injustice and oppression. Generally there is a constant effort on the part of the European officer to prevent such acts and punish offenders. My experience is that this is especially the case in the district of Katanga. The regulations of the Special Committee provide that no armed parties of soldiers should travel or patrol without a European officer. Native soldiers are not allowed to enter villages alone, and weekly markets are held at which a European official buys food for his soldiers from the neighbouring villages, so endeavouring to do away as far as possible with direct dealing between the soldier and the people. My experience of the last two years has convinced me that in the district of Katanga at any rate the Belgian officials endeavour to treat the Central African native with justice and leniency, and in as great a degree as officials of any other nation look on him as a human being, with a perfect right to sell his labour and his food on terms satisfactory to himself. When I first entered the Congo, at the time that the officials of the Special Committee were establishing their government, and before I had come into personal contact with them, I found some armed natives who posed as soldiers of the Belgian Government, and who lived more or less the life of robbers, raiding and stealing wherever they went. The natives believed that these men were the authorised police of the European Administration, whose white officials they had not yet seen, and members of my expedition reported to me on the shocking behaviour of the Belgian Askari. I later learnt the complete mistake we had made in believing these men to be Government employees. In a short time they completely disappeared, caught or driven out by the agents of the committee. The Ba-Luba and Wasanga, the tribes we have been working among, are, we find, a peaceable, industrious race, with practically no warlike propensity, an easy prey to any organised hostile force. I am led to believe that their numbers have decreased during the last fifty years owing to a continuous traffic in slaves with the Arabs of the East and Mambunda of the West. To-day the slave trade has ceased in this particular district, the traders being afraid to come anywhere near the Belgian posts. To such an extent have conditions changed with the advent of Belgian administration that many small chiefs are now recovering individuals raided from them by their stronger neighbours and not already sold to the traders when European control reached the country.

In all discussions and criticism of the mistakes made by European administration in Central Africa there is one condition which seems to me to be never taken into account. That is the necessity of employing officials who have to spend a long time learning how to do efficiently the work that they have to carry on from the day they arrive at their posts. There is no school in which to learn Central African Civil Service except Central Africa, and it is impossible in Africa to obtain a sufficient number of qualified officials. Not many go to Central Africa with the idea of making their permanent homes there. It has been my own good fortune to settle in a healthy part of Central Africa, but from my knowledge of the Continent as a whole, I think it is not an exaggeration to state that two-thirds of the officials who leave Europe are, within five years of their arrival, either killed by the climate, invalided home, or have left the country at the termination of an agreement. All these have to be constantly replaced by inexperienced men, with their job to learn. What wonder then that grievous mistakes are sometimes made by some of these untried men, necessarily placed in responsible positions? In writing this letter to you, I state only my own experience and opinion of the spirit and effect of Belgian administration in the district of Katanga; but it seems natural to me to suppose that the same spirit extends throughout the whole of the Congo territory; and it seems almost the duty, at the present time, of any Englishman who has had opportunity to judge of the general methods of Belgian administration to give publicity to his knowledge.—Yours, etc.,

G. Grey.

Baltimore, Oct. 21, 1904.

The Honorary Secretary,
Congo Reform Association.

Sir,—I avail myself of the first opportunity which has presented itself to acknowledge your letter of the 18th instant. In that letter you call my attention to certain resolutions adopted by the Peace Congress at Boston. I fail to see in these resolutions any vote of censure upon the Congo Free State. They express rather a desire for information in regard to the international status of that State.

It appears that those who voted for the resolutions were in need of enlightenment on the subject, but this information lies near at hand. There is no need to appeal to any tribunal. Diplomatic history, diplomatic correspondence concerning the Independent State of the Congo, and the acts and the protocols of the Conference of Berlin, as well as of the Conference of Brussels, all prove conclusively that the Congo Free State is an independent sovereign State, and that the powers have no right of guardianship or intervention.

Your letter also refers to certain documents, such as the British Parliamentary White Book, Africa, No. 7 (1904), which, however, has not escaped my attention. Permit me to say that this book, instead of proving your contention, proves the exact contrary, and shows that both the administration and the courts of the Congo are using their endeavours to correct such evils as may exist—for no human government is perfect.

The interpellation in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, to which you refer, seems to have been simply a fruitless attempt on the part of the Socialist leader to annoy the Government. The very fact that the Chamber considered Mr. Vandervelde’s charges against the Congo, and refused to sympathise with him in his views, is in itself a significant indication of the baselessness of his accusations.

In your letter you are also pleased to say that in speaking in defence of the Congo Government I have spoken “unwittingly,” and to imply that I have not considered the facts nor weighed the evidence. I can assure you that I have not spoken without due consideration. As to the evidence, it is overwhelmingly against your contention.

It is only some score of discontented men, depending largely on the untrustworthy hearsay evidence of natives, who have raised an outcry against the Congo Administration, out of a great band of 500 or 600 missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, who are working on the Congo, and who give thanks to the Congo Administration for its support to the missions, and for its successful efforts to introduce Christianity and civilisation into Central Africa.

Overwhelming evidence in favour of the Congo Government has been given recently by missionaries and by travellers, and it is not only Catholic missionaries, like Monsignor Van Ronslé and Father Van Hencxthoven, who have spoken in praise of the State, but also the most distinguished Protestant missionaries, such as the Rev. Mr. Bentley and Dr. Grenfell.

As it is not likely that you will convert me, and as I see no probability of convincing you, I, for my part, think it best to consider the correspondence closed.

Very sincerely yours,
(Signed) James, Cardinal Gibbons.

I was utterly unprepared [he continues] for what I found at Irebu and at Coquilhatville, buried away there on the equator in the very heart of the great forest. For what are these stations? Large haphazard jumbles of native dwellings and white men’s bungalows in an arid clearing, with ill-kempt roadways, such as one would find in the Western States? No; here we have great open towns of really artistic brick houses, with palm-thatched roofs and wide verandahs, each standing in its own little garden, bright with roses and hibiscus, Spanish iris and flamboyants, and set well back along straight, wide avenues shaded by bamboos, mangoes, papayes, acacias, bread-fruit trees, or one of a dozen other leafy and ornamental equatorial trees. In spacious grounds will be found the residence of the local governor, chef-de-poste, or commandant, as the case may be, with its twenty to thirty-foot verandah and its flagstaff in front, placed usually so as to command the full view of the river front. Round one or more spacious squares at the intersections of the principal avenues will be the various public offices—the Directorate of Transports, the Post Office, the Magasins de l’État, the headquarters of the Force Publique, the Office of Agriculture, and the rest. At Bikoro there are 2200 acres overlooking the lovely Lac Tumba, sometimes miscalled Man Tumba or M’Tumba, a corruption of Mai Na Tumba, water (or lake) of war. Round Coquilhatville there are little short of 4500 acres of these plantations, and round Irebu and Imesse something like 1200 acres in each case. Then near to each station will be the extensive market gardens, where every manner of vegetable, both European and tropical, is raised in profusion, and also the large, well-kept farm or farms, which supply the principal officials with beef and mutton, goat and pork, poultry and ducks, and in which a ceaseless series of experiments in breeding and raising stock adapted to the climate is carried on.

And this has been achieved not in one isolated spot near the coast, where material and transport were ready to hand, but at every “white post” up here in the very heart of the black continent, cut off until a few years ago from the capital and the seaboard by that deadly, costly barrier—the white man’s cemetery of the Cataract caravan road. How has it been done? Let us take Irebu as a typical case. Seven years ago a young Belgian lieutenant, Jeuniaux by name, was sent out to take charge of the military training camp at the junction of the Ubanghi, the Congo, and the Tumba Canal, on the site of a former larger and flourishing native village. He came, and he found an unhealthy and pestilential swamp covered with the ruins and the filth of the then almost deserted village of Irebu. Among these unpleasant surroundings was a large group of ill-kempt and badly constructed mud and thatch huts—the training camp; and here he was doomed to pass at least three years. But he was young and energetic, and had passed unscathed along the latter half of the caravan road in the cataract district, for the railway was then but half completed. He had seen brick houses in other stations, and clean, well-kept, well-arranged little townships. He would have the same. But his first difficulty was that this was a training camp, whither the raw, untutored savage was drafted in his naked ignorance to undergo six months’ tuition only; and, so soon as he had acquired a sufficient training to make him of use to the white man, he was hurried on elsewhere and a new batch of raw material took his place. Jeuniaux had but a hazy notion of architecture, but, unaided, he planned and designed his barracks, and acted as his own foreman, devising quaint methods to construct weather-proof walls and roofs from the materials at hand, and instructing his workers, man by man, in these methods, and that without even the medium of a common language.

At last his barracks were built, and the old huts destroyed; coffee, cocoa, maize, sweet potatoes, and bananas grew in well-ordered plantations, between parallel, palm-lined avenues, where formerly had been a wilderness of insanitary ruins. Then came the great feat of all—brick houses for the whites and for the Departmental offices. Bricks, bricks. He knew that bricks were made somehow from some sort of clay, and he had a hazy notion that straw was essential to their composition. So he started on a series of experiments. In the intervals of his work—with two sub-lieutenants to help him, he was responsible for training, feeding, and controlling from 1000 to 1500 soldiers, with their wives and families, for maintaining order in his district, and developing its commercial resources, and for ruling the natives in it; how well he had done this work I will show in a moment—but, in the intervals, he went on clay-hunting expeditions, and then sat up at night experimenting on what he had found, and at last he produced what he recognised as the real red brick—the philosopher’s stone of his research. And so the first brick house in Irebu was built in one year from when Jeuniaux first came. And he built other houses for his lieutenants and white non-coms., and a residency for himself, and a guest house large and comfortable, and post-office, state stores, guard-house, pharmacy, armoury, and houses for all the other whites. One by one they were built, and Jeuniaux, now Commandant Jeuniaux, and his ever-changing pupils built them all, until he had realised his ambition, and had constructed a model station, with its lovely avenues, its riverside promenade, its fine landing-stage, its parade ground, where 1200 men may, without crowding, manœuvre in companies at once, and its pretty public gardens. And when his first term of three years was over he left, with the sense of work accomplished, for his six months’ holiday. All the time in Europe he pictured the growth of his plantations and his palms, and told his friends he should be glad to get back “home” to Irebu, the town he built with his own hands. And the night before he reached it he could not sleep for excitement; and all day he strained his eyes to catch a glimpse of it, and at last it came in sight. But not the Irebu he knew. The plantations had reverted into jungle, the avenues had disappeared, lost in the quick, rank growth; the pleasure gardens were a wilderness; the finest of the palms had been cut down; and he went through the coarse, wild vegetation that clogged the entrance to his house, and into the damp hall-way that was become the home of bats, and of rats, and of lizards, and he sat down there, and he wept. For so, in six short months, had an idle officer left in charge during his absence undone the labour of three years.

But he is not a man to be easily daunted. To-day Irebu is as spick and span and as beautiful as he first conceived it. The benefit that accrues to the natives as well as to the whites from so well-built and arranged a station is shown by the change that has occurred in the health of Irebu. One of Jeuniaux’s first cares was to make the place sanitary. Now, since he built the station, i. e., in the five years since summer, 1899, there have been only two deaths among the whites,—although their number has been increased,—and of these one was a case of sunstroke, the other one probably of deliberate intent to die by disobeying orders during an illness on receipt of bad news. Since 1901 there has not been one death among Europeans. The mortality rate among the soldiers has decreased to 14 per 1000 average, and for the current year to 12 per 1000, or a fraction under. And this despite the fact that the sudden change in their mode of life when they enter military service must be a severe strain on the recruits, and also that Irebu, lying at the junction of waterways, is constantly having dumped down in it cases of infectious diseases, which are discovered on the river steamers, and which are put ashore at the nearest station.

Now, I mention all this about the building of Irebu, not simply to glorify Commandant Jeuniaux, but because the work that has been done there, the difficulties he has had to contend with and has overcome, the result that has been achieved, are identical with what every commandant has met with in each of the beautiful stations that you will find in the Middle Congo. Each of these represents the personal exertion of one individual, and their existence is eloquent testimony to the ability and devotion with which the State is served by its servants.

I have witnessed [she says] more atrocities in London streets than I have seen in the Congo, which remark applies to the rubber country as well as the rest of the State. I travelled through every part of the country, and am convinced that the allegations of maladministration are groundless. Wherever I went I found the natives treated with kindness and consideration, while the improvements in the condition of the land and its inhabitants are almost incredible.