the river boats is that it enables them to go
into business. The price of food at the small settlements up river is
much less than at Kinshassa, where navigation from Stanleyville
southward ends. Hence the blacks acquire considerable stores of palm oil
and dried fish at the various stops made by the steamers and dispose of
it with large profit when they reach the end of the journey. I have in
mind the experience of a capita on the "Comte de Flandre." When we left
Stanleyville his cash capital was thirty-five francs. With this he
purchased a sufficient quantity of food, which included dozens of pieces
of _chikwanga_, to realize two hundred and twenty francs at Kinshassa.

These river natives are genuine profiteers. They invariably make it a
rule to charge the white man three or four times the price they exact
from their own kind. No white man ever thinks of buying anything
himself. He always sends one of his servants. As soon as the vendor
knows that the servant is in the white employ he shoves up the price. I
discovered this state of affairs as soon as I started down the Lualaba.
In my innocence I paid two francs for a bunch of bananas. The moment I
had closed the deal I observed larger and better bunches being purchased
by natives for fifty centimes.

This business of profiteering by the natives is no new phase of life in
the Congo. Stanley discovered it to his cost. Sir Harry Johnston, the
distinguished explorer and administrator, who added to his achievements
during these past years by displaying skill and brilliancy as a
novelist, tells a characteristic story that throws light on the
subject. It deals with one of the experiences of George Grenfell, the
eminent British missionary who gave thirty years of his unselfish life
to work in the Congo. On one of his trips he noticed the corpse of a
woman hanging from the branches of a tree over the water of the great
river. At first he thought that she had been executed as a punishment
for adultery, one of the most serious crimes in the native calendar. On
investigation he found that she had been guilty of a much more serious
offense. A law had been imposed that all goods, especially food, must be
sold to the white man at a far higher price than the local market value.
This unhappy woman had only doubled the quotation for eggs, had been
convicted of breaking the code, and had suffered death in consequence.

Since I have referred to adultery, let me point out a situation tha