e post for
the French boats we would count two hundred and fifty cords of wood.
I took photographs of the native villages in all the colonies, in
order to show how they compared--of the French and Belgian wood
posts, the one well stocked and with the boys lying about asleep or
playing musical instruments, or alert to trade and barter, and on
the Belgian side no wood, and the unhappy white man alone, and
generally shivering with fever. Had the photographs only developed
properly they would have shown much more convincingly than one can
write how utterly miserable is the condition of the Congo negro. And
the condition of the white man at the wood posts is only a little
better. We found one man absolutely without supplies. He was only
twenty-four hours distant from Leopoldville, but no supplies had
been sent him. He was ill with fever, and he could eat nothing but
milk. Captain Jensen had six cans of condensed milk, which the State
calculated should suffice for him and his passengers for three
months. He turned the lot over to the sick man.

We found another white man at the first wood post on the Kasai just
above where it meets the Congo. He was in bed and dangerously ill
with enteric fever. He had telegraphed the State at Leopoldville and
a box of medicines had been sent to him; but the State doctors had
forgotten to enclose any directions for their use. We were as
ignorant of medicines as the man himself, and, as it was impossible
to move him, we were forced to leave him lying in his cot with the
row of bottles and tiny boxes, that might have given him life,
unopened at his elbow. It was ten days before the next boat would
touch at his post. I do not know that it reached him in time. One
could tell dozens of such stories of cruelty to natives and of
injustice and neglect to the white agents.

The fact that Leopold has granted to American syndicates control
over two great territories in the Congo may bring about a better
state of affairs, and, in any event, it may arouse public interest
in this country. It certainly should be of interest to Americans
that some of the most prominent of their countrymen have gone into
close partnership with a speculator as unscrupulous and as notorious
as is Leopold, and that they are to exploit a country which as yet
has been developed only by the help of slavery, with all its
attendant evils of cruelty and torture.

That Leopold has no right to give these concessions is a matter
whi