e Mess of the thirty or forty whites employed on
the line who live here very well for mutton as well as goat can be
purchased from the natives. The price of everything which has to be
carried from Europe is very high at Stanleyville for the cost of
transport is very great. In the afternoon, we make a tour of the town,
and as it is impossible to walk, I am conveyed in a kind of bathchair
resting on one wheel. One boy goes in front and one behind and when the
road is very bad or an obstacle is met, they lift the machine bodily
over it. It is however, a bumpy ride, for the roads are very rough and
the chair has no springs. We pass the Mess, capable of dining sixty men
and visit the prison. This is a brick building arranged as a quadrangle
with an exercising yard in the centre. The cells are lofty and airy and
only one prisoner occupies each, but many sleep in one dormitory.
Everywhere great cleanliness is observed, so that one is not altogether
surprised to learn that the mortality due to Sleeping Sickness is very
small among the prisoners. Some of them are making mats and baskets in
the yard, but most are working on the chain outside. In a separate
building, the women, who also wear light chains, are cooking dinner for
the prison. Indeed, on the whole the lot of a prisoner in the Congo is
better than he would be likely to experience in a native village, with
the exception that he is compelled to work. Most of the people are
sentenced for theft or violence, but one woman was imprisoned for
throwing a solution of pepper into the face of her husband and nearly
blinding him. There is a separate room set apart for white prisoners,
but it has not yet been used and is at present much more satisfactorily
occupied by the instruments of the band of the Force Publique.

Near the Mess we pass the house of Tippo-Tip, a small mud structure with
a verandah and a roof of grass. It is not used at all now, but is
allowed to remain as an historical monument. Stanley was compelled to
negotiate with Tippo in order to avoid a conflict at the time when the
State was not sufficiently armed to undertake such a task but since
then, Arab rule has been entirely driven from Central Africa. Almost
opposite the Falls, a fort is being constructed with a ditch all round.
When finished, it will be capable of holding the whole garrison and
supplies for eighteen months. It is of course, only constructed as a
defence against native attacks and is not built st