The English Note of the month of August is founded, I am convinced, on reports stamped with partiality. The assertions of a missionary have been reproduced, according to whom the natives flee at the approach of the Congo State officials. They fled before me also when I was there. The mere apparition of a white man, the simple sight of an unusual being or object, puts them to flight. That is part of the animal instinct of self-preservation. Whites and blacks always approach one another for the first time with a general sentiment of distrust. Little by little they learn to know one another, and this sentiment disappears. The Congo was in truth the darkest part of Africa. To-day with its forests pierced and open, its routes, its stations, it is in advance of all other African States. Take the French Congo, German East Africa, Portuguese West Africa, and compare them! The Congo State prospers in a greater degree than any other part of the black continent. [Illustration: Coffee-Drying Grounds, Coquilhatville (Equateur).] [Illustration: Bakusu Woman (Lualaba-Kassai).] The Congo State is accused of employing as soldiers cannibal Negroes. When I was on the Congo, and I accused a tribe of cannibalism it replied: “We are not cannibals, but our neighbours are.” The neighbouring tribe said: “It is not we, it is the next tribe that you will meet”; and that tribe referred us on to the next, and so on continually. They seemed to be ashamed of their cannibalism. They concealed it. Yet there was no doubt as to the existence of this practice. I frequently met with trenches freshly disturbed, from which corpses had been taken to be eaten. It was very seldom that I could discover the guilty. How then in recruiting its troops was the Congo State to distinguish the black cannibals from those who are not cannibals? I am convinced that since I left Africa King Leopold has done his best to prevent all crime on the Congo. But he is no more responsible for the crimes which may be committed there than for those occasionally committed on the soil of Belgium itself. There are on the Congo 300 officials who report to the Governor-General, who in his turn addresses a summary of these reports to the King. They discharge their mission under the most difficult conditions, and I believe that I may assert that from the Governor-General down to the humblest official there is not one of them guilty of cruelty. Moreover, it is for those who speak of atrocities to furnish proof of them. I know by experience what a large number of stories are put forward, then refuted, and afterwards resuscitated year after year. These are legends for travellers. Use is made of them with every change of the wind in Africa. Those who relate them are often the prey of climatic maladies.