the State and methods of punishment are adopted which are rarely if ever found elsewhere.  For minor offences the Europeans are fined by stopping their pay for a certain number of days and sometimes a man is revocated, which means he is sent home without being paid for the six months or year previously.  In this way men who drink hard when they have the opportunity, who are habitually insubordinate, or who are undesirable, are weeded out rapidly.  Penal offences are of course tried in the Courts and punished with imprisonment.  It is indeed curious after travelling in America and our colonies, to find, sturdy, rough, independent characters behaving with extraordinary meekness and docility.  Drunken brawls and promiscuous revolver shooting are unknown in the Congo, for the simple reason, that it is impossible up country to procure drink.  There are no drink shanties or gambling dens and indeed no amusements of any kind.  Men work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., have their dinner and go to bed.  Very little news penetrates from the outside world and conversation is therefore, limited to the immediate affairs of the individuals concerned.  Small matters thus appear to be far more important than they really are and the story of any little adventure soon becomes magnified out of all recognition.  This, perhaps, accounts also for some of the absurd stories of atrocities.

On the last day of the year we reach Leopoldville and are comfortably installed in the Inspector’s house.  A kind of fete is held in the evening and a procession passes with lanterns on poles, but there is very little singing or noise of any kind and the whole affair is rather ghostly.

On January 2nd we leave Leopoldville by train and remembering the amount of the fare coming up, I was careful to reduce my baggage to the minimum.  Of course the food cases were all empty, the wine drunk, the salt paid away to natives and the petroleum burnt; still for myself, three boys and excess baggage, the fare for the two hundred miles was over L25.  Just before we left Leopoldville, who should enter the carriage but Mr. Joseph Clarke, of Ikoko, and another Mr. Clark, who is also a Missionary.  I was very pleased to see them and hear the news from their side of the question.  They were travelling to Maladi to attend a meeting of missionaries, but to-day only proceeded as far as Kinshassa.  Mr. Clarke told me he had sent to the Commission of Enquiry some new photographs of the boy without a hand whom he had shown to me at Ikoko and was convinced that the world would be startled when the report appeared.  All the meetings of the Commission are held in public and therefore the evidence submitted at them is already known.  The interpretation of this apparently depends upon the already formed opinion of the individual, for while the State officials say that very little, if anything, has been proved against the Government, the Missionaries are quite satisfied that the A.B.I.R.  Company will be severely condemned.  Of course no report can possibly satisfy any of the controversialists for their feelings are too strong to permit them to be content with cold facts judicially stated.