Everyone in Boma works hard, from the Secretaire General who is at his office from 7 a.m. to midday and from 2.30 to 5 p.m. to the hardy healthy-looking native who wields his pick as he chats with his fellows.  Roads are being made and gardens laid out in various places.  One very noticeable feature of the natives here, is that they nearly all bear wellmarked vaccination marks.  Here and there a policeman patrols in an effective costume of blue and red and armed with a short sword.  Everywhere is order, method, and cleanliness, and it is very difficult to realise that a quarter of a century ago only three trading houses stood on the site of this prosperous and well-regulated little town.  In the evening we dined with the Governor General who has both a good cook and butler; the wines being excellent.  Outside, the band of the Force Publique played selections of music, rendered the more interesting by the fact that not one of the players could read a note of music and each learnt his part entirely by ear.  Most of the guests were our fellow travellers and well known to us.  The conversation turned upon the Sleeping Sickness, Beri Beri, the difficulty of growing wheat in the Congo, and the climate.  It is not very hot in Boma about this time, for it is the winter or dry season and the nights are so cold that only the very hardy mosquitoes are sufficiently wide awake to prevent people sleeping.  Still it is hotter, than we ever experience in England, and with forethought for the comfort of his guests, Mr. Costermans usually commands white costumes instead of European dress.

The native hospital is a newly-built stone and brick structure and is under the charge of an Italian, Dr. Zerbini.  The wards are well arranged in separate wings, permitting good ventilation and isolation.  The beds are iron with bamboos stretched lengthwise, thus forming a kind of spring mattress.  There are many cases of Sleeping Sickness in the hospital exhibiting various symptoms.  In the early stages the patient has many fits of emotional excitement and these alternate with periods of physical and mental languor.  Afterwards he lies for weeks or months as if dead and can only be persuaded to eat with great difficulty.  Ultimately complete coma supervenes.  A motile bacillus has been discovered which is supposed to cause the disease and there is evidence that this may be carried by a mosquito or fly, but until the discoveries of the doctors, sent out by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, are published, it is premature to give an opinion.  Up to the present many remedies have been prescribed without success.  There is no small pox and little phthisis, and it is interesting to learn that appendicitis is unknown in Africa.  Rupture is very common among the natives and venereal diseases are frequent.