[Illustration: Coffins for Native Chiefs, Wangata, 1897 (Equateur).] It was beyond the financial power of the State to provide an adequate military organisation on such a basis. While the administrators of the Congo were devising means for the support of an efficient force at a reduced cost, the British government on the Gold Coast prohibited further recruiting of Haussas by foreign states. Barred from getting its soldiers from surrounding British territory, the Congo Government proceeded to develop its earlier plans for raising a native local force, the first purpose of which was that it should supplement the main body of regular troops. The nucleus of what is the present Public Force were the men of the Bangala tribe, whom Captain Coquilhat employed as armed police when he founded Equateurville in 1885. A short time thereafter, Captain Van Dorpe made the same experiment among the Manyanga. Finding the men from both tribes fit for a military career, the principle of employing aboriginal races in the Public Force was followed with the rapid establishment of the numerous posts and stations erected at that time. The wisdom of employing natives for the organisation of such a national force was soon apparent. In 1888 an order was issued to form eight companies of one hundred and fifty men, with power to increase the number to two hundred and fifty. It was not, however, till 1891 that Baron Van Eetvelde and the Governor-General, M. Camille Janssen, drafted a practical scheme for the foundation of a permanent Public Force. Mr. Demetrius C. Boulger, whose volume entitled _The Congo State_ treats at length of the subject up to 1898, describes the scheme which the Sovereign had approved: