y about a tenth as long. It estimates the
Force Publique at 30,000 men, rather more than twice its full strength,
and its author is under the impression that the people may not collect
the produce of the land or "barter it for merchandise." It is a little
difficult to understand what the author means here. As a matter of fact,
the people are trading with each other, all day long and with the white
travellers whenever they have the opportunity. They sell food, lances,
native knives and all kinds of curiosities to those who desire them and
are at perfect liberty to barter away all their property if they wish to
do so. They may not of course enter the territories of the State or
Private Companies and take the ivory or rubber, any more than the people
in Europe may walk on to private land and gather the corn or fruit from
it for their own use or profit. The native indeed is in the position of
a farm labourer who gathers the fruits of the soil for his master and is
paid a wage for so doing. On Sunday I attend service in the chapel. A
native from Sierra Leone reads a lesson from the Gospel of St. Matthew,
which has been translated into Bangala and gives a short address on the
subject afterwards. He is evidently much in earnest and talks with that
kind of spirit of conviction frequently to be noticed in street
preachers. Several hymns are sung and then the people pass out, dropping
their mitakos into the plate as they do so. In the afternoon, we walk
round the village. Mr. Clarke notices a boy with a malformation of one
knee and speaks to him. He then explains to me that this is another
atrocity, for the boy said he had been shot by the soldiers of the State
when an infant. An examination of the boy however, showed he was
suffering from a kind of bony tumour. There are several chiefs in Ikoko
and one of them also practises as a doctor. He has cleared a space about
ten feet in diameter and enclosed it for a consulting room, while an
inner chamber, still more closely surrounded, is the secret place where
the infusions are made and the charms and fetishes consulted. Although
many of the drugs used, are efficacious or not, according to the faith
of the patient, as in civilised countries, yet the white people
constantly tell of apparently wonderful cures by native doctors, and it
is certain that the people at present prefer to be treated by those of
their own colour. There is also an old lady in Ikoko, the widow of a
chief, who is re