e houses are provided for the traveller at
different points on the line. Since everyone carries his own bed it is
easy to establish sleeping quarters without delay or inconvenience. On
this particular trip I slept at Malela, in the house ordinarily occupied
by the Chief Engineer of the line. The Minister of the Colonies had used
it the night before and it was scrupulously clean. I must admit that I
have had greater discomfort in metropolitan hotels.

I was now in the almost absolute domain of the native. The only white
men that I encountered were an occasional priest and a still more
occasional trader. At Kibombo the train stopped for the mail. When I got
out to stretch my legs I saw a man and a woman who looked unmistakably
American. The man had Texas written all over him for he was tall and
lank and looked as if he had spent his life on the ranges. He came
toward me smiling and said, "The Minister of the Colonies was through
here yesterday in a special train and he said that an American
journalist was following close behind, so I came down to see you." The
man proved to be J. G. Campbell, who had come to install an American
cotton gin nine kilometers from where we were standing. His wife was
with him and she was the only white woman within two hundred miles.

Campbell is a link with one of the new Congo industries, which is cotton
cultivation. The whole area between Kongolo and Stanleyville,
three-fourths of which is one vast tropical forest, has immense
stretches ideally adapted for cotton growing. The Belgian Government has
laid out experimental plantations and they are thriving. In 1919 four
thousand acres were cultivated in the Manyema district, six thousand in
the Sankuru-Kasai region, and six hundred in the Lomami territory.
Altogether the Colony produced 6,000,000 pounds of the raw staple in
1920 and some of it was grown by natives who are being taught the art.
The Congo Cotton Company has been formed at Brussels with a
capitalization of 6,000,000 francs, to exploit the new industry, which
is bound to be an important factor in the development of the Congo. It
shows that the ruthless exploitation of the earlier days is succeeded by
scientific and constructive expansion.

Campbell's experience in setting up his American gin discloses the
principal need of the Congo today which is adequate transport. Between
its arrival at the mouth of the Congo River and Kibombo the mass of
machinery was trans-shipped exactly f