They told of seeing more than fifty severed hands at a time, including hands of children, which the soldiers were taking to the white men to prove that they had killed people according to their orders. The black soldiers had also eaten the flesh of their victims. Sometimes the agents demanded an amount of food from the natives for themselves and the entire post which the natives could only continue to furnish by buying from other natives; and they were expecting that when they could buy no more they would be killed. In some villages when the impost of food was delivered the people had nothing left for themselves, and fed on leaves. When the rubber in certain districts was becoming exhausted and the tax was not reduced the people mixed the latex (juice of the rubber vine) with an inferior latex, and when they did so the agent, if it was discovered, made them eat it. The work about the posts was done by slaves, mostly women, and at night these women were obliged to be at the disposal of the native soldiers. Missionaries themselves had met soldiers driving to the post women tied together with ropes, to be held as hostages until their husbands could bring a certain amount of rubber. This was the usual means of compelling men to bring rubber. They often tortured the women in order to intimidate the men. But many of the hostages could not be redeemed and were starved to death. They told of the mutilations of the living, of hands and feet chopped off, and of men unsexed. They told of four or five men placed in a row one behind another and shot with one bullet, and of women and children crucified. They told of the population of certain districts reduced from thousands to hundreds, and in other districts wiped out entirely. It is estimated by some that since the ascendency of King Leopold in the Congo the total population has decreased from twenty-five millions to fifteen millions, there being ten million murders set down to the account of the king. Returning from Matadi to the steamer in the sultry tropical night, it seemed as if the very atmosphere were drenched with blood, that we breathed its vapours, and that the great swift-rolling tide beneath us was the blood of the slain millions, hurrying out to incarnadine the sea that boats against the shores of all the civilized world.