wirling brown water, dotted with flat
islands overgrown with reed grass higher than the head of a man.
Again the water turned blue and the trees on the banks grew into
forests with the look of cultivated, well-cared-for parks, but with
no sign of man, not even a mud hut or a canoe; only the strangest of
birds and the great river beasts. Sometimes the sky was overcast and
gray, the warm rain shut us in like a fog, and the clouds hid the
peaks of the hills, or there would come a swift black tornado and
the rain beat into our private box, and each would sit crouched in
his rain coat, while the engineer smothered his driving-rods in palm
oil, and the great drops drummed down upon the awning and drowned
the fire in our pipes. After these storms, as though it were being
pushed up from below, the river seemed to rise in the centre, to
become convex. By some optical illusion, it seemed to fall away on
either hand to the depth of three or four feet.

But as a rule we had a brilliant, gorgeous sunshine that made the
eddying waters flash and sparkle, and caused the banks of sand to
glare like whitewashed walls, and turn the sharp, hard fronds of the
palms into glittering sword-blades. The movement of the boat
tempered the heat, and in lazy content we sat in our lookout box and
smiled upon the world. Except for the throb of the engine and the
slow splash, splash, splash of the wheel there was no sound. We
might have been adrift in the heart of a great ocean. So complete
was the silence, so few were the sounds of man's presence, that at
times one almost thought that ours was the first boat to disturb the
Congo.

Although we were travelling by boat, we spent as much time on land
as on the water. Because the _Deliverance_ burnt wood and, like an
invading army, "lived on the country," she was always stopping to
lay in a supply. That gave Anfossi and myself a chance to visit the
native villages or to hunt in the forest.

To feed her steamers the State has established along the river-bank
posts for wood, and in theory at these places there always is a
sufficient supply of wood to carry a steamer to the next post. But
our experience was either that another steamer had just taken all
the wood or that the boys had decided to work no more and had hidden
themselves in the bush. The State posts were "clearings," less than
one hundred yards square, cut out of the jungle. Sometimes only
black men were in charge, but as a rule the _chef de po