er in Nebraska by a
Kansas statesman which was, "A river three-quarters of a mile wide and
three-quarters of an inch deep." Thus the Congo journey takes on a
constant element of hazard because you do not know what moment you will
run aground on a sand-bank, be impaled on a snag, or strike a rock.

Although the "Comte de Flandre" was rated as the fastest craft on the
Congo our progress was unusually slow because of the scarcity of wood
for fuel. This seems incredible when you consider that the whole Congo
Basin is one vast forest. Millions of trees stand ready to be sacrificed
to the needs of man, yet there are no hands to cut them. In the Congo,
as throughout this distracted world, the will-to-work is a lost art, no
less manifest among the savages than among their civilized brothers. The
ordinary native will only labour long enough to provide himself with
sufficient money to buy a month's supply of food. Then he quits and
joins the leisure class. Hence wood-hunting on the Congo vies with the
trip itself as a real adventure. The competition between river captains
for fuel is so keen that a skipper will sometimes start his boat at
three o'clock in the morning and risk an accident in the dark in order
to beat a rival to a wood supply.

All up and down the river are wood-posts. Most of them are owned by the
steamship companies. It was our misfortune to find most of them
practically stripped of their supplies. A journey which ordinarily takes
twelve days consumed twenty. But there were many compensations and I had
no quarrel with the circumstance:

I had the good fortune to witness that rarest of sights that falls to
the lot of the casual traveller--a serious fight between natives. We
stopped at a native wood-post--(some of them are operated by the
occasionally industrious blacks)--for fuel. The whole village turned out
to help load the logs. In the midst of the process a crowd of natives
made their appearance, armed with spears and shields. They began to
taunt the men and women who were loading our boat. I afterwards learned
that they owned a wood-post nearby and were disgruntled because we had
not patronized them. They blamed their neighbours for it. Almost before
we realized it a pitched battle was in progress in which spears were
thrown and men and women were laid out in a generally bloody fracas. One
man got an assegai through his throat and it probably inflicted a fatal
wound.

In the midst of the melee one of my f