From information which reached Europe and America early in November, 1904, it would appear that Great Britain has resolved to carry this matter with a high hand. A British expedition was said to be then in process of formation, composed of 2500 native troops, officered by Englishmen, to penetrate Central Africa, ostensibly to restore order among the Niam-Niam tribe. Now the Niam-Niam tribe inhabit the Bahr-el-Ghazal country. That is one reason why Great Britain concerns herself with that tribe; but there is another, and a much stronger, reason. Recently it has been discovered that vast mineral wealth exists in that region, and Belgians, Frenchmen, Germans, and particularly natives of that country which “seeks no gold mines and seeks no territory,” have busily employed themselves in prospecting it. Trading relations have been established by small companies supposed to be engaged in exchanging fire arms and ammunition for ivory, but really prospecting for ore. Side by side with this information comes the official announcement that the British Government has given orders, either directly or through a subsidised company, for the erection of a permanent telegraph connecting Khartoum with the Bahr-el-Ghazal, and that transport for traders up the White Nile is guaranteed as far as Fashoda. Already a section of the British newspaper press is advocating the establishment of British military stations and posts upon ground of which King Leopold holds a perfectly valid lease granted by Great Britain! [Illustration: King Nekuku and his Suite at Boma.] Is it too high a flight of the imagination to suppose that the patience with which the British Government has listened to the libellous tirades against the Congo Free State, in the form of petitions to the House of Commons, is to be explained by its evident desire to cut loose from its treaty obligations, and forcibly take away what it voluntarily ceded to the Congo Free State for a valuable consideration? CHAPTER XX MUTINIES OF THE BATETELA TRIBE [Sidenote: The Batetela Grievance.] The hasty and ill-advised trial and execution of the chief, Gongo Lutete, described in another chapter, proved a source of much danger and tribulation to the Congo Free State. It was the act of a misguided and over-zealous officer, without doubt undertaken in good faith, but none the less disastrous upon that account. The incident has never been defended, but always deplored, by the Congo Government, to which it occasioned grievous loss in men, money, and reputation.