out of its case.
It is a beautiful night with clear, cool air. Streams of silver flow
from the moon on the water, while the palms tower high with majestic
crowns. Here we are in the very midst of real nature and yet again it
unpleasantly recalls the scenery of a theatre. It is indeed
extraordinary with what accuracy scenic artists construct tropical
scenes. The surroundings tend to make one sentimental and regret that
this veritable garden of Eden should be exploited to make billiard balls
and rubber tyres for automobiles and bicycles. The native also, instead
of hunting elephant and hippos, eating his fill and sleeping, and eating
again and sleeping again until the carcase has disappeared and then
hunting again, now has to collect rubber juice and cut wood for an ugly
looking steam flat. Such however, is civilisation in the Congo.

Spoor of elephants and hippos abound and the grunt of the latter can
frequently be heard, but they are not sitting up on their haunches
waiting to be shot. The clear, shrill chirp of the sentry bird is indeed
warning the big beasts that something strange is moving and we shall
have to lie still for a long while probably before getting a chance at
the great heads as they are raised from the water.

After a walk of about a mile, we arrive at the place where the captain's
boy was supposed to have killed the hippo. The truth was he had _fired
at_ a beast who, as the spoor clearly showed, had walked calmly into the
river and not a trace of blood could be seen. After a time, with
practice perhaps, one will be able to gauge the truth from an ordinary
Congo statement.

Next day we reach the mouth of the Kasai, a large tributary which drains
much of the Equatorial District of the Congo. Here is a State Post,
Kwamouth, with a few well constructed houses and a Catholic Mission
where pretty walking sticks with ivory handles can be purchased and
where the Fathers make a few cigars from Congo tobacco which are not at
all bad smoking. A little further up the river, is the deserted Catholic
Mission of St. Marie which has evidently been at one time well arranged
with a large manioc plantation and garden. Here however, the Sleeping
Sickness appeared and the mortality was so heavy that the place was
abandoned. The disease had no doubt existed before, but it was this
terrible epidemic which first attracted the serious notice of Europeans.

It is becoming clear that there are a great number of nationalities