ion
is ever adequate. You must live with them to catch the magic. No
painter, for instance, can translate to canvas the elusive and
ever-changing verdure of the dense forests under the brilliant tropical
sun, nor can those elements of mystery with their suggestion of wild
bird and beast that lurk everywhere at night, be reproduced. Life flows
on like a moving dream that is exotic, enervating, yet intoxicating.

Accustomed as I was to dense populations, the loneliness of the Lualaba
was weird and haunting. On the Mississippi, Ohio, and Hudson rivers in
America and on the Seine, the Thames, and the Spree in Europe, you see
congested human life and hear a vast din. In Africa, and with the
possible exception of some parts of the Nile, Nature reigns with almost
undisputed sway. Settlements appear at rare intervals. You only
encounter an occasional native canoe. The steamers frequently tie up at
night at some sand-bank and you fall asleep invested by an uncanny
silence.

I spent six days on the Lualaba where we made many stops to take on and
put off freight. Many of these halts were at wood-posts where our supply
of fuel was renewed. At one post I found a lonely Scotch trader who had
been in the Congo fifteen years. Every night he puts on his kilts and
parades through the native village playing the bagpipes. It is his one
touch with home. At another place I had a brief visit with another
Scotchman, a veteran of the World War, who had established a prosperous
plantation and who goes about in a khaki kilt, much to the joy of the
natives, who see in his bare knees a kinship with themselves.

At Kabalo I touched the war zone. This post marks the beginning of the
railway that runs eastward to Lake Tanganyika and which Rhodes included
in one of his Cape-to-Cairo routes. Along this road travelled the
thousands of Congo fighting men on their way to the scene of hostilities
in German East Africa.

When the Great War broke out the Belgian Colonial Government held that
the Berlin Treaty of 1885, entitled "A General Act Relating to
Civilization in Africa" and prohibiting warfare in the Congo basin,
should be enforced. This treaty gave birth to the Congo Free State and
made it an international and peaceful area under Belgian sovereignty.
Following their usual fashion the Germans looked upon this document as a
"scrap of paper" and attached Lukuga. This forced the Belgian Congo into
the conflict. About 20,000 native troops were mobilize