of the Rest House and an
excellent cook. While he was preparing it my boys spread out my
folding rubber tub. Had I closed the door I should have smothered,
so, in the presence of twenty interested black Baptists, I took an
embarrassing but one of the most necessary baths I can remember.

There still was a piece of the ice remaining, and as the interest in
the bathtub had begun to drag I handed it to one of my audience. He
yelled as though I had thrust into his hand a drop of vitriol, and,
leaping in the air, threw the ice on the floor and dared any one to
touch it. From the "personal" boys who had travelled to Matadi the
Mission boys had heard of ice. But none had ever seen it. They
approached it as we would a rattlesnake. Each touched it and then
sprang away. Finally one, his eyes starting from his head,
cautiously stroked the inoffensive brick and then licked his
fingers. The effect was instantaneous. He assured the others it was
"good chop," and each of them sat hunched about it on his heels,
stroking it, and licking his fingers, and then with delighted
thrills rubbing them over his naked body. The little block of ice
that at Liverpool was only a "quart of water" had assumed the value
of a diamond.

Dinner was enlivened by an incident. Mr. Weekes, with orders simply
to "fry these," had given to the assistant of the cook two tins of
sausages. The small _chef_ presented them to us in the pan in which
he had cooked them, but he had obeyed instructions to the letter and
had fried the tins unopened.

After dinner we sat until late, while the older men told the young
missionaries of atrocities of which, in the twenty years and within
the last three years, they had been witnesses. Already in Mr.
Morel's books I had read their testimony, but hearing from the men
themselves the tales of outrage and cruelty gave them a fresh and
more intimate value, and sent me to bed hot and sick with
indignation. But, nevertheless, the night I slept at Thysville was
the only cool one I knew in the Congo. It was as cool as is a night
in autumn at home. Thysville, between the Upper and the Lower Congo,
with its fresh mountain air, is an obvious site for a hospital for
the servants of the State. To the Congo it should be what Simla is
to the sick men of India; but the State is not running hospitals. It
is in the rubber business.

All steamers for the Upper Congo and her great tributaries, whether
they belong to the State or the Missions,