of the
Father. The priest smiled and left us, returning with a rosary and
crucifix, which the boy hung round his neck, and then knelt, and the
red-bearded Father laid his fingers on the boy's kinky head. He was
a very happy boy over his new possession, and it was much coveted by
all the others. One of the black mammies, to ward off evil from the
little naked baby at her breast, offered an arm's length of blue
cloth for "the White Man's fetish."

[Illustration: The Jesuit Brothers at the Wombali Mission.]

My voyage up the Kasai ended at Dima, the headquarters of the Kasai
Concession. I had been told that at Dima I would find a rubber
plantation, and I had gone there to see it. I found that the
plantation was four days distant, and that the boat for the
plantation did not start for six days. I also had been told by the
English missionaries at Dima, that I would find an American mission.
When I reached Dima I learned that the American mission was at a
station further up the river, which could not be reached sooner than
a month. That is the sort of information upon which in the Congo
one is forced to regulate his movements. As there was at Dima
neither mission nor plantation, and as the only boat that would
leave it in ten days was departing the next morning, I remained
there only one night. It was a place cut out of the jungle, two
hundred yards square, and of all stations I saw in the Congo, the
best managed. It is the repair shop for the steamers belonging to
the Kasai Concession, as well as the headquarters of the company and
the residence of the director, M. Dryepoint. He and Van Damme seemed
to be the most popular officials in the Congo. M. Dryepoint was up
the river, so I did not meet him, but I was most courteously and
hospitably entertained by M. Fumiere. He gave me a whole house to
myself, and personally showed me over his small kingdom. All the
houses were of brick, and the paths and roads were covered with
gravel and lined with flowers. Nothing in the Congo is more curious
than this pretty town of suburban villas and orderly machine shops;
with the muddy river for a street and the impenetrable jungle for a
back yard. The home of the director at Dima is the proud boast of
the entire Congo. And all they say of it is true. It did have a
billiard table and ice, and a piano, and M. Fumiere invited me to
join his friends at an excellent dinner. In furnishing this
celebrated house, the idea had apparently been to