Then, again, there have been occasions when the natives have migrated to avoid payment of the taxes imposed upon them by their own chief on behalf of the State, taxes which are infinitesimal in value as compared with the benefits of civilisation which the State confers. To deal generally with the displacement of the population of the Congo Free State has been a matter of much concern to the Government. A case of sleeping-sickness or smallpox has occurred, and away goes the whole village pell-mell into another region. The movements of the native tribes are often inscrutable, and afford the State no clue as to how they may be prevented. Like some species of wild animals which instinctively avoid certain districts of the forest at particular seasons, or on account of some unusual phenomena, the black man will sometimes quit his residence for no apparent reason at all. Nine times out of ten, however, he migrates on account of things entirely unconnected with any administrative act of the State. Entire villages have been removed because a death has occurred there the cause of which was inexplicable to the black man. Occasionally the fetish doctor, inspired by some unexplained caprice, will decree that the tribe shall move—he knows not where. Ignorance and superstition invariably follow a leader whose pretence is some occult power. The tribe moves; and another tribe, moving from a similar or other impulse, may occupy the very village which the first tribe had abandoned a few weeks before. These removals along the banks of the river have sometimes created the impression on a superficial observer that the population of the Congo Free State has diminished or disappeared. Regardless of the impression these deserted villages have made upon those who seek to find opportunity for vilifying the Congo Government, the inconvenience resulting from the constant removals has been very great. There is often at one point an aggregation of people too numerous for their subsistence, and public order and tranquillity are disturbed, with disastrous results. More strife between village and village and tribe and tribe has been occasioned by this migratory habit than by any bloodthirsty instinct inherent in the Congolese black. This is notoriously true; and it has had a gravely adverse effect, too, upon the population of the Soudan, with regard to which the statements in Lord Cromer’s report of 1893 are conclusive. [Sidenote: Possible Remedies.] Vice-Governor-General Fuchs, always seeking to improve the governmental machinery of the Congo Free State, has recently made the following suggestions, which, if adopted, he believes would tend to control the migratory nature of the subjects over whom he so intelligently rules: