angerous journey
into a most interesting tour and I sincerely hope that all will remain,
as I hope they are now, good friends, whether they agree with me or not
about the merits of the system of Government in the Congo.

After bidding farewell to the residents at Boma, I left in the _Wall_ on
January 10th and after a rapid journey to Banana, joined the
_Anversville_ which immediately put to sea and by sunset the mouth of
the Congo was out of sight.

The voyage home was uneventful, except for a few days of strong head
winds. Among the passengers were Mr. Gohr, the Director of Justice, who
well deserved a holiday after his extremely responsible and arduous
duties, Captain Stevens, the Commissaire of the Equator District, as
cheerful and jolly as ever, Mr. Longlain, the Director of the A.B.I.R.
Company who has come in for a quite unmerited share of abuse, and many
other State Officials, many of whom were in an indifferent state of
health. Two or three Catholic and some Baptist Missionaries were also
travelling home and it was interesting and satisfactory to find that
everyone, whether State Official, Missionary or Trader, was convinced
that the Commission of Enquiry would issue a report which would
correspond with his own opinion.

There was plenty of time to arrange the impressions of the tour in order
and to formulate some general ideas on the system of Government in the
Congo and the manner in which it is administered. The whole system has
been created and is controlled absolutely by one mind. It is a very
simple and extremely practical machine, but it is very vast. The
officials who work it therefore, have each their own special task
allotted to them and very few appear to understand the principles on
which the whole moves. The problem which has been faced and successfully
overcome, is how an unknown land populated by savages can be developed
and civilised by its own resources without heavily taxing the native and
without poisoning him with alcohol.

It is done in this manner. Each native is compelled to do a certain
amount of work for the State. This results in the collection of great
quantities of rubber and ivory for which the native is paid. The rubber
and ivory are then sold at a profit in Europe and the sum so realised is
used to pay the heavy expenses of transport, to keep up the Government
and to open out new lines of communication throughout the country. The
native is thus made to work instead of paying a