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. The quarters of the Force Publique here are very comfortable. Each man has a room to himself about seven feet square constructed of brick and the sergeants have a small house, each containing two rooms and a verandah. I looked into one or two and they were well arranged. Bed and mosquito curtain, table and chair with a few pictures and ornaments, showed what an advance the native had made in civilisation since he slept in a hut on the mud floor. Finally we visited the motive power which enables all this to be done, the rubber stores. Here people were busy sorting and packing the precious material into baskets ready to be carried to the Barge which was waiting to sail. CHAPTER X. Stanley Falls to London.