aces one can see the track on three different
levels. It is not a State road, but was built and is owned by a
Dutch company, and, except that it charges exorbitant rates and does
not keep its carriages clean, it is well run, and the road-bed is
excellent. But it runs a passenger train only three times a week,
and though the distance is so short, and though the train starts at
6:30 in the morning, it does not get you to Leopoldville the same
day. Instead, you must rest over night at Thysville and start at
seven the next morning. That afternoon at three you reach
Leopoldville. For the two hundred and fifty miles the fare is two
hundred francs, and one is limited to sixty pounds of luggage. That
was the weight allowed by the Japanese to each war correspondent,
and as they gave us six months in Tokio in which to do nothing else
but weigh our equipment, I left Matadi without a penalty. Had my
luggage exceeded the limit, for each extra pound I would have had to
pay the company ten cents. To the Belgian officers and agents who go
for three years to serve the State in the bush the regulation is
especially harsh, and in a company so rich, particularly mean. To
many a poor officer, and on the pay they receive there are no rich
ones, the tax is prohibitive. It forces them to leave behind
medicines, clothing, photographic supplies, all ammunition, which
means no chance of helping out with duck and pigeon the daily menu
of goat and tinned sausages, and, what is the greatest hardship, all
books. This regulation, which the State permitted to the
concessionaires of the railroad, sends the agents of the State into
the wilderness physically and mentally unequipped, and it is no
wonder the weaker brothers go mad, and act accordingly.

My black boys travelled second-class, which means an open car with
narrow seats very close together and a wooden roof. On these cars
passengers are allowed twenty pounds of luggage and permitted to
collect two hundred and fifty miles of heat and dust. To a black boy
twenty pounds is little enough, for he travels with much more
baggage than an average "blanc." I am not speaking of the Congo boy.
All the possessions the State leaves him he could carry in his
pockets, and he has no pockets. But wherever he goes the Kroo boy,
Mendi boy, or Sierra Leone boy carries all his belongings with him
in a tin trunk painted pink, green, or yellow. He is never separated
from his "box," and the recognized uniform of a Kroo