Many times we have been asked by other white men of God who have come on visits, “Why do you not tell these bad doings of which we hear? Why do you not report to the white chiefs?” It was like this: we were afraid to tell—afraid of the consequences to ourselves afterwards; we had been threatened with such dreadful things by the sentries if we dared to speak of their doings. I do not wonder that they did not want their doings talked about, for I have not told you one-tenth of the bad things they did, and the worst of the things cannot be even mentioned. And then, so many promises which had been made to us by white men had been broken, of what use was it to get more promises from them? They would only be broken like the rest, we thought, and so we gave up, and when the white men tried to find out things we even ran away and hid, rather than tell them, and so bring greater trouble on ourselves and our families. There was just one way out of our slavery, and some of our young men availed themselves of it. It was to become a sentry oneself. Only a few had the opportunity, and those who took it soon became as bad as the other sentries with whom they came in contact. They found that the only way to please the white man was to get plenty of rubber; and in order to do that they were obliged to use the same means as the others and become cruel oppressors of their own people. When they were remonstrated with they would say, “It is better to be with the hunters than with the hunted. We have the chance to join the hunters: what more?” I never had the chance myself; perhaps if I had I might have done the same; for if you compare our lives with the lives of the sentries, I do not think that even a white man can wonder that some of us chose the easy way. There is one thing of which I have not yet told you; we think it is one of the worst of all our trials. We scarcely know about the beginning of it, but it seems to have been soon after the end of the “sickness of heaven” that this other sickness began to come amongst us. We call it “nkangi ea iló” (“sickness of sleep”), and many refer to it as “this desolation,” “losilo lóne.” Both names describe it. When a person has the disease, he gradually gets more and more languid until at last he sleeps all the time, and the disease destroys him. We have no hope for the future on account of this disease, as well as our other troubles; no one ever recovers, but generally the whole family take it, and die one after the other, until whole villages are almost wiped out. At first only a few people had it; and though we did not understand it, we thought that, like other sicknesses, it would be cured. But in a very few years it has spread from house to house and village to village, away into the back towns and far up-river; it seems as if it had no ending!