Since those days a Belgian company has built a narrow-gauge railway running between Matadi and Stanley Pool. I cannot pay too high a tribute to the splendid courage, persistency and engineering skill exhibited by the Belgians who surveyed the land for the lines at the cost of many lives; and built the railway, conquering immense difficulties, and thus achieving for themselves a great and deserved financial success. If the Congo Free State had sent men of the same kind and class to govern the country that the railway company sent, and are sending, to build and control the railway, we should never have heard about the terrible atrocities that have taken place, nor should we have heard of mal-administration, cruel oppression, and the mutilation of wretched, unprotected natives. The railway officials treat their native employees honourably and honestly; and although hundreds of our native Christians work on the railway as stokers, guards, brakesmen, storekeepers, and stationmasters, I have never heard a single complaint from them against their white masters. They have to work hard, but they are treated justly, and they are sure of their pay; and our native Christians are always ready to sign contracts with the railway authorities for one or more years. In the early eighties the road from Matadi to Stanley Pool was thickly populated, and every hour or two brought the traveller to a large, decently-kept town; but in 1890 the people were mostly gone, and the few villages left on that long stretch of road were small and neglected, and the few remaining people had a wretched, poverty-stricken appearance. Why this change? In the meantime the country had become the possession of the African International Association, which quickly changed into the Congo Free State with King Leopold II of Belgium as its ruler. Zanzibaris were imported during this period, armed with rifles, and sent up-country to found and occupy the State stations on the Upper Congo. These soldiers no doubt were liberally provided with brass rods to buy native food on their march to Stanley Pool; but they found a people practically unarmed, for what were flint-lock guns in the hands of natives—who depended more on the magic of their “medicine men” for straight shooting than on the accuracy of their aim—against weapons of precision in the hands of a trained and unscrupulous soldiery such as were the Zanzibaris? The results were constant raiding on the part of the Zanzibaris; looting of unprotected native huts; taking twenty rods’ worth of food and throwing down only two or three rods in payment; and often when there was a white officer in charge, and he was appealed to, no redress was obtained by the defrauded native, nor punishment meted out to the offender; but frequently the accuser was beaten from the white man’s presence, thus adding physical suffering and insult to the loss of goods.