“Now the men from Bolobo had bought the manioc bread from the native women. They had steeped the tubers in the river for four or five or six days until the poison had all been washed away, they had then picked the fibres out, dried the mush, and when dry they had made it into good bread. That was what fed the Bolobo men, and fattened them. But the men of Yambuya had scraped their manioc, and cut the roots for drying in the sun, and as they did so they ate many a piece raw, and before the slices were well dried they had eaten some, because they had no reserve of food, and hunger forced them. Even those of you who put your roots to soak in the water ate many a nice-looking bit, and you bruised and cooked your greens to serve with your badly-prepared bread, and men naturally sickened and died of the poison; and the men of Bolobo, when they came up, did like the men of Yambuya, and by-and-by they fell ill and died also. That is the reason why there are a hundred graves at Yambuya, and that is what ails these sick men here. Not one of the white men died, because they had rice, beans, biscuits and meat of fowl and goat. If it were the climate that had killed your friends, the white men less adapted for it would have died first, as they have done on the lower Congo; but neither the climate nor the camp had anything to do with your mortal sickness--the retching, and quaking of the limbs, the vertigo and pain in the head, the weakening of the knees, and the softening of the muscles, the final loathing, and indifference to life--nothing else than the poison of the bitter manioc. “What you should have done was to have sent two or three daily out of each mess to gather in the manioc in sufficient quantities and steep it in the river, and have always plenty of prepared flour on hand to make porridge or dumplings when hungry. Had you done so, I should have about 200 sleek and strong men ready for travel with me to Zanzibar. “Now follow what I say to you now. Eat as little of this manioc as you can. Go, gather plenty of it, put it in the river to steep, and while it is soaking eat your fill of bananas and plantains. In a day or two I will move away from here. The sick shall be carried to a big island a few hours distant, and there you will prepare twenty days’ provisions of flour. Those who cannot get sufficient bananas make gratings over the fire, slice your manioc thin, and let them dry till morning; then pound, and make into flour, and eat what is good for white man as well as black. To-morrow, all of you come back again to me, and you will throw away those filthy rags of clothing into the river, and I shall clothe you anew. Meantime, rejoice, and thank God that we have come to save you from the grave.”