At Coquilhatville, as elsewhere in the State, the prisoners are given useful work to do.  Near by a party were digging a hole by the roadway.  They were chained together but the chain was so long that it did not hamper their movements.  Two policemen were on guard, but the whole gang were evidently taking matters very easily.

In the evening we dine with the Commissaire and a party of sixteen or eighteen, including many of our fellow travellers, Mr. Grenfell and Dr. Button, of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who is here studying the Sleeping Sickness.  Everyone we meet who has travelled in other countries and also visited the Congo, is astonished at the wonderful development of the place.  It is indeed becoming more and more apparent that the State has gone ahead very fast and that the stress has been great, both for Europeans and natives.  Probably, now the machine is fairly set rolling, it will proceed more steadily in the future.

Next day we decide to leave the Flandre and stay for a week or so at Coquilhatville.  Commandant Ankstroem, the Adjoint Superieur to the Commissaire, kindly lends us his house and we at once move in, glad to leave the mosquitoes of the river and to sleep in a room once more.  Everything in the house and garden is scrupulously clean and tidy, characteristics which I may add were found in nearly every Post and house in the whole country.  The sanitary arrangements are the perfection of simplicity.  There are no drains, but simple receptables which are emptied and cleaned every morning while carbolic acid is used liberally.  This admirable system is carried out in every Post, however large or small, and I never once found it unobserved.  The natives themselves are also very cleanly in their habits, so that although the heat is great and decomposition proceeds very rapidly, bad smells are absolutely unknown.  Near the residency is a well kept farm and the mutton tasted particularly nice after the diet of goat on the steamer.

The effect of the climate on my digestion is curious.  In Europe all forms of starch and sugar give me indigestion and I have therefore to avoid bread, potatoes, jam, sugar and kindred substances.  Here however, I have a craving for these things and never have indigestion.  I mention this personal trait, because many other travellers in the tropics have often stated that they could march on rice and jam for days without desiring meat of any kind.  No doubt the system is working at, so to speak, high pressure, but it is curious that a complete change in one’s idiosyncrasies should take place even in the first month.