but welcomes the formation of private companies who will help them in their gigantic undertaking.  It is difficult to realise that probably no man, white or black, has ever set foot in the forest a few hundred yards away, and yet we are travelling smoothly along a steel railroad through a tractless desert of trees propelled by a modern steam locomotive.  The line does not pass near a single native village, for this part is not thickly populated and the only creatures whose paths are interrupted, are the elephants, buffaloes and wild pigs.  On our return we visit the house of Mr. Adams, a solid structure of brick and European cement, and the Mess of the thirty or forty whites employed on the line who live here very well for mutton as well as goat can be purchased from the natives.  The price of everything which has to be carried from Europe is very high at Stanleyville for the cost of transport is very great.  In the afternoon, we make a tour of the town, and as it is impossible to walk, I am conveyed in a kind of bathchair resting on one wheel.  One boy goes in front and one behind and when the road is very bad or an obstacle is met, they lift the machine bodily over it.  It is however, a bumpy ride, for the roads are very rough and the chair has no springs.  We pass the Mess, capable of dining sixty men and visit the prison.  This is a brick building arranged as a quadrangle with an exercising yard in the centre.  The cells are lofty and airy and only one prisoner occupies each, but many sleep in one dormitory.  Everywhere great cleanliness is observed, so that one is not altogether surprised to learn that the mortality due to Sleeping Sickness is very small among the prisoners.  Some of them are making mats and baskets in the yard, but most are working on the chain outside.  In a separate building, the women, who also wear light chains, are cooking dinner for the prison.  Indeed, on the whole the lot of a prisoner in the Congo is better than he would be likely to experience in a native village, with the exception that he is compelled to work.  Most of the people are sentenced for theft or violence, but one woman was imprisoned for throwing a solution of pepper into the face of her husband and nearly blinding him.  There is a separate room set apart for white prisoners, but it has not yet been used and is at present much more satisfactorily occupied by the instruments of the band of the Force Publique.

Near the Mess we pass the house of Tippo-Tip, a small mud structure with a verandah and a roof of grass.  It is not used at all now, but is allowed to remain as an historical monument.  Stanley was compelled to negotiate with Tippo in order to avoid a conflict at the time when the State was not sufficiently armed to undertake such a task but since then, Arab rule has been entirely driven from Central Africa.  Almost opposite the Falls, a fort is being constructed with a ditch all round.  When finished, it will be capable of holding the whole garrison and supplies for eighteen months.  It is of course, only constructed as a defence against native attacks and is not built strong enough to resist big gun fire.