of animals, for they eat, drink, and sleep
if left alone and only work when they are shown how, and watched all the
time.

The result was that I spent a most horrible night, for the mosquitoes
were terribly hostile and evidently recognised a new European with some
healthy blood. In the morning, my head, which I had had shaved in the
Congo fashion, was covered with large bumps and face, neck, hands and
wrists were all blotches. It was therefore with little appetite that I
sat down to a breakfast of bread, dutch cheese, curious tinned butter
and weak coffee without milk. Little however, did I think then that in
six short months a Congo steamer would seem like a first class hotel, so
entirely is everything altered by comparison.

[Illustration: CATARACTS AT LEOPOLDVILLE.]

CHAPTER III.

The Higher Congo.

Next day we make a formal call on Mr. Mahieu, Inspecteur d'Etat of the
Congo State, whose headquarters are at Leopoldville. He is a very busy
man with a multitude of duties, for the paternal system is continued all
through the State and the most trivial matters are always referred to
the highest official in the neighbourhood. As we are to lunch at the
Residency, we do not stay long, but take a ride with Commandant and Mme.
Sillye on four of the horses the former purchased at Dakar. Although a
little stiff after their holiday of a month, they have not been
otherwise affected by their sea voyage and two days in the train. Along
the beach are many steamers charging and discharging and others on the
slips being repaired or partly built. These steamers are all brought out
in sections and put together on the beach. They are flat bottomed, are
driven by stern wheels and only draw three or four feet of water. They
all burn wood, and special depots are formed at intervals on the rivers
where stores of this fuel are collected. Should however, a steamer run
short, it is only necessary to stop and send the crew ashore with knives
for the banks are lined with forest.

Leaving the beach we ride through avenues of palms and mango trees to
higher ground, whence a beautiful view can be obtained of Stanley Pool.
This is really a part of the river about sixteen miles wide, shut in by
hills on each side, but its size is not apparent from the water itself,
as a great number of islands cut the stream into numerous narrow
channels. Towards the south, the river narrows again and at this point
is the uppermost of the cataracts, the