the most intelligent and ambitious natives are thus drawn
away from their primitive condition of life and become attached to their
masters, who give them cloth to wear and beads with which to beautify
themselves. The most important Chiefs are as anxious indeed to appear
like Europeans, as a prosperous native of Sierra Leone, is to wear
patent boots and carry a silk umbrella. There is one near here named
Bayer, a young man of much intelligence and business capacity, who has
built himself a brick house, dresses like a European, and is a proud man
when he is asked to smoke a cigar on the verandah of the mess. The
Chiefs are, however, never asked to eat with the Europeans, a
distinction which is both necessary and wise.

[Illustration: YOUNG SANGO GIRLS AT BANZYVILLE.]

It daily becomes more and more obvious that the white man is greatly
respected and that his word is absolutely trusted. What he says is true
and what he promises, he does. The native appears to respect these
characteristics perhaps all the more because he is so lamentably
deficient in them himself.

It is indeed the respect caused by moral not physical force which
enables a few Europeans to govern this great country with success, and
permits one or two white men to live securely with a few soldiers in an
isolated Post surrounded by thousands of natives most of whom are
savage cannibals.

There are, however, many difficulties yet to be surmounted, and among
them is the arrangement of a satisfactory currency. This was brought
home forcibly on October 1st when according to weekly custom, the people
in the villages around brought in food for the Post. Many women appeared
with large bunches of bananas for which as a rule, they are paid by
beads. In this prosperous part the heads of the women are already fully
adorned with beads and most of their household ornaments also, so they
demanded cloth instead.

The question of the currency is a very difficult one. There is the
danger of flooding the banks of the Congo with mitakos, and the banks of
the Ubangi with beads. In other words these articles which function as
money are not used as rapidly as they are supplied, and a lady whose
limbs are already weighted with brass rings and whose head is heavy with
beads, wishes for some other payment. There is a warehouse at each of
the State Posts in which cloth, clothes, beads, salt, and many other
commodities likely to be of use to the natives are kept, but it is
mani