Mr. Clarke lends me a copy of the Memorial concerning conditions in the Independent State of the Congo which was presented to the American Senate early in 1904.  There seem to be a great many curious errors in it.  It starts with the astounding statement that the Congo Free State has a sea board of 400 miles along the Atlantic, whereas a glance at the map will show that it is really about a tenth as long.  It estimates the Force Publique at 30,000 men, rather more than twice its full strength, and its author is under the impression that the people may not collect the produce of the land or “barter it for merchandise.”  It is a little difficult to understand what the author means here.  As a matter of fact, the people are trading with each other, all day long and with the white travellers whenever they have the opportunity.  They sell food, lances, native knives and all kinds of curiosities to those who desire them and are at perfect liberty to barter away all their property if they wish to do so.  They may not of course enter the territories of the State or Private Companies and take the ivory or rubber, any more than the people in Europe may walk on to private land and gather the corn or fruit from it for their own use or profit.  The native indeed is in the position of a farm labourer who gathers the fruits of the soil for his master and is paid a wage for so doing.  On Sunday I attend service in the chapel.  A native from Sierra Leone reads a lesson from the Gospel of St. Matthew, which has been translated into Bangala and gives a short address on the subject afterwards.  He is evidently much in earnest and talks with that kind of spirit of conviction frequently to be noticed in street preachers.  Several hymns are sung and then the people pass out, dropping their mitakos into the plate as they do so.  In the afternoon, we walk round the village.  Mr. Clarke notices a boy with a malformation of one knee and speaks to him.  He then explains to me that this is another atrocity, for the boy said he had been shot by the soldiers of the State when an infant.  An examination of the boy however, showed he was suffering from a kind of bony tumour.  There are several chiefs in Ikoko and one of them also practises as a doctor.  He has cleared a space about ten feet in diameter and enclosed it for a consulting room, while an inner chamber, still more closely surrounded, is the secret place where the infusions are made and the charms and fetishes consulted.  Although many of the drugs used, are efficacious or not, according to the faith of the patient, as in civilised countries, yet the white people constantly tell of apparently wonderful cures by native doctors, and it is certain that the people at present prefer to be treated by those of their own colour.  There is also an old lady in Ikoko, the widow of a chief, who is reported to be very clever as a healer.  This old person has European features but has an unpleasant expression.  The native women wear nothing but a thin belt with a small piece of cloth attached but they are covered with brass rings, and the principle wife of an important chief here was wearing a necklet of solid brass which must have weighed thirty or forty pounds.  This was fixed on and had to be worn night and day.