This same enormous population, and the pervading air of prosperity, are a striking indication of the possibilities of native races left to work out their own destiny. The far-famed unity and power of the Ruanda people have deterred the Arabs from making slave-raids into their country, and with the exception of one or two Belgian looting expeditions, which fortunately met with no success, they have been left in peace. All the southern and eastern coast-line drops abruptly into the lake, and there is no beach or marshland such as are found on the other lakes of Central Africa, but the feeding-streams, at their junction with the lake, become papyrus swamps. There were only ten soldiers in the fort, and they rolled in the lap of luxury, calmly relieving the neighbouring population of what they (the soldiers) considered superfluities, such as goats, sheep, fowls, etc. This is the invariable result of placing natives in a post of responsibility without constant supervision. As to their duties, they had none; and it was patent that the sole _raison d’être_ of these posts was to be able on the day of reckoning to show a definite asset, a claim to effective occupation--in fine, a fulfilment of the duties imposed upon European powers by the Berlin Conference. The Soudanese officer in charge was most friendly, and the neighbouring chiefs arrived in long procession and paid their respects. They presented us with several goats and sheep, and when we expressed the wish to purchase more, they brought them along in a ceaseless stream. Subsequently we discovered that the affable Soudanese officer and his brother ruffians, hearing of our approach, had annexed several herds from some villages two days north; these were the beasts that arrived in such bewildering profusion. They had insisted on the owners accepting a handful of beads, thereby establishing a claim to legitimate purchase, and compelled the local natives to bring the beasts in to us as their own property. There are numerous small villages in the vicinity of the post, and the people, who live in the most wretched huts, thrown up like hayricks, appear to have been very thoroughly bled by their undesirable neighbours. An extraordinary feature of Kivu, and the rivers and small lakes of the Kivu system, is the absence of hippopotami and crocodiles. As they swarm in Tanganyika and the Rusisi to the south, and in the Rutchuru and Albert Edward Lake to the north, this is very remarkable. Probably the abrupt nature of the shore, the depth of water, and the absence of sandbanks and shelving beaches may account for it. The only possible landing-and-resting-places would be the papyrus swamps that I have mentioned as existing at the mouths of the streams; and the water, hurrying down from high altitudes, and shaded from the sun by the papyrus, is here intensely cold, and therefore unsuited to their requirements.