We found another white man at the first wood post on the Kasai just above where it meets the Congo.  He was in bed and dangerously ill with enteric fever.  He had telegraphed the State at Leopoldville and a box of medicines had been sent to him; but the State doctors had forgotten to enclose any directions for their use.  We were as ignorant of medicines as the man himself, and, as it was impossible to move him, we were forced to leave him lying in his cot with the row of bottles and tiny boxes, that might have given him life, unopened at his elbow.  It was ten days before the next boat would touch at his post.  I do not know that it reached him in time.  One could tell dozens of such stories of cruelty to natives and of injustice and neglect to the white agents.

The fact that Leopold has granted to American syndicates control over two great territories in the Congo may bring about a better state of affairs, and, in any event, it may arouse public interest in this country.  It certainly should be of interest to Americans that some of the most prominent of their countrymen have gone into close partnership with a speculator as unscrupulous and as notorious as is Leopold, and that they are to exploit a country which as yet has been developed only by the help of slavery, with all its attendant evils of cruelty and torture.

That Leopold has no right to give these concessions is a matter which chiefly concerns the men who are to pay for them, but it is an interesting fact.

The Act of Berlin expressly states:  "No Power which exercises, or shall exercise, sovereign rights in the above-mentioned regions, shall be allowed to grant therein a monopoly or favor of any kind in matters of trade."

Leopold is only a steward placed by the Powers over the Congo.  He is a janitor.  And he has no more authority to give even a foot of territory to Belgians, Americans, or Chinamen than the janitor of an apartment house has authority to fill the rooms with his wife’s relations or sell the coal in the basement.

The charge that the present concessionaires have no title that any independent trader or miner need respect is one that is sure to be brought up when the Powers throw Leopold out, and begin to clean house.  The concessionaires take a sporting chance that Leopold will not be thrown out.  It should be remembered that it is to his and to their advantage to see that he is not.

In November of 1906, Leopold gave the International Forestry and Mining Company of the Congo mining rights in territories adjoining his private park, the Domaine de la Couronne, and to the American Congo Company he granted the right to work rubber along the Congo River to where it joins the Kasai.  This latter is a territory of four thousand square miles.  The company also has the option within the next eleven years of buying land in any part of a district which is nearly one-half of the entire Congo.  Of the