ng, over the iron pots, the firelight shone
on their bare shoulders and was reflected from their white teeth and
rolling eyes and brazen bangles.

Until late in the night the goats would bleat, babies cry, and the
"boys" and "mammies" talked, sang, quarrelled, beat tom-toms, and
squeezed mournful groans out of the accordion of civilization. One
would have thought we had anchored off a busy village rather than at
a place where, before that night, the inhabitants had been only the
beasts of the jungle and the river.

IV

AMERICANS IN THE CONGO

In trying to sum up what I found in the Congo Free State, I think
what one fails to find there is of the greatest significance. To
tell what the place is like, you must tell what it lacks. One must
write of the Congo always in the negative. It is as though you
asked: "What sort of a house is this one Jones has built?" and were
answered: "Well, it hasn't any roof, and it hasn't any cellar, and
it has no windows, floors, or chimneys. It's that kind of a house."

When first I arrived in the Congo the time I could spend there
seemed hopelessly inadequate. After I'd been there a month, it
seemed to me that in a very few days any one could obtain a
painfully correct idea of the place, and of the way it is
administered. If an orchestra starts on an piece of music with all
the instruments out of tune, it need not play through the entire
number for you to know that the instruments are out of tune.

The charges brought against Leopold II, as King of the Congo, are
three:

(_a_) That he has made slaves of the twenty million blacks he
promised to protect.

(_b_) That, in spite of his promise to keep the Congo open to trade,
he has closed it to all nations.

(_c_) That the revenues of the country and all of its trade he has
retained for himself.

Any one who visits the Congo and remains only two weeks will be
convinced that of these charges Leopold is guilty. In that time he
will not see atrocities, but he will see that the natives are
slaves, that no foreigner can trade with them, that in the interest
of Leopold alone the country is milked.

He will see that the government of Leopold is not a government. It
preserves the perquisites and outward signs of government. It coins
money, issues stamps, collects taxes. But it assumes none of the
responsibilities of government. The Congo Free State is only a great
trading house. And in it Leopold is the only wholesale and retail