e had reserved a new thing for them to know. The
Christians. Alas! that one should have to say it, but here the fact is,
that white men, Christian men, have taken these people, have drawn under
the banner of Christianity and under Christian pay all the warlike tribes,
armed them, and set them as task-masters over the humble and meek. And
never in the history of the world has such a state of servitude been known
as at present exists in the country of this forlorn people.

They had been marching some three hours when, from ahead came a sound as
of some huge animal approaching. Berselius half turned to his gun-bearer
for his rifle, but Felix reassured him.

"Cassava bearers," said Felix.

It was, in fact, a crowd of natives; some thirty or forty, bearing loads
of Kwanga (cassava cakes) to Yandjali. They were coming along the forest
path in single file, their burdens on their heads, and when the leaders
saw the white men they stopped dead. A great chattering broke out. One
could hear it going back all along the unseen line, a rattlesnake of
sound. Then Felix called out to them; the gun-bearers and the white men
stood aside, and the cassava bearers, taking heart, advanced.

They were heavily laden, for most of them had from ten to twenty Kwanga on
their heads, and besides this burden--they were mostly women--several of
them had babies slung on their backs.

These people belonged to a village which lay within Verhaeren's district.
The tax laid on this village was three hundred cakes of cassava to be
delivered at Yandjali every eight days.

The people of this village were a lazy lot, and if you have ever collected
taxes in England, you can fancy the trouble of making such people--savages
living in a tropical forest, who have no count of time and scarcely an
idea of numbers--pay up.

Especially when one takes into consideration the fact that to produce
three hundred cakes of cassava every eight days, the whole village must
work literally like a beehive, the men gathering and the women grinding
the stuff from dawn till dark.

Only by the heaviest penalties could such a desirable state of things be
brought about, and the heavier and sharper the punishments inflicted at
any one time, the easier was it for Verhaeren to work these people.

Adams watched the cassava bearers as they passed at a trot. They went by
like automatic figures, without raising their eyes from the ground. There
were some old women amongst them who loo