companion, a good book.

I therefore carried with me the following books in handy volume
size:--Montaigne's Essays, Palgrave's Golden Treasury of English Verse,
Lockhart's Life of Napoleon, Autobiography of Cellini, Don Quixote, The
Three Musketeers, Lorna Doone, Prescott's Conquest of Mexico and The
Conquest of Peru, Les Miserables, Vanity Fair, Life and Writings of
Benjamin Franklin, Pepys' Diary, Carlyle's French Revolution, The Last
of the Mohicans, Westward Ho, Bleak House, The Pickwick Papers, A Tale
of Two Cities, and Tolstoi's War and Peace. When these became exhausted
I was hard put for reading matter. At a post on the Kasai River the only
English book I could find was Arnold Bennett's The Pretty Lady, which
had fallen into the hands of an official, who was trying to learn
English with it. It certainly gave him a hectic start.

Then, too, there was the eternal servant problem, no less vexing in that
land of servants than elsewhere. I had cabled to Horner to engage me two
personal servants or "boys" as they are called in Africa. When I got
to Elizabethville I found that he had secured two. In addition to
Swahili, the main native tongue in those parts, one spoke English and
the other French, the official language in the Congo. I did not like the
looks of the English-speaking barbarian so I took a chance on Number
Two, whose name was Gerome. He was a so-called "educated" native. I was
to find from sad experience that his "education" was largely in the
direction of indolence and inefficiency. I thought that by having a boy
with whom I had to speak French I could improve my command of the
language. Later on I realized my mistake because my French is a
non-conductor of profanity.

[Illustration: A STATION SCENE AT KONGOLA]

Gerome had a wife. In the Congo, where all wives are bought, the consort
constitutes the husband's fortune, being cook, tiller of the ground,
beast-of-burden and slave generally. I had no desire to incumber myself
with this black Venus, so I made Gerome promise that he would not take
her along. I left him behind at Elizabethville, for I proceeded to
Fungurume with Horner by automobile. He was to follow by train with my
luggage and have the private car, which I had chartered for the journey
to Bukama, ready for me on my arrival. When I showed up at Fungurume the
first thing I saw was Gerome's wife, with her ample proportions swathed
in scarlet calico, sunning herself on the platform of the car.