steamer, arm in arm with missionaries practically all the time, and obtained all his information from the river bank instead of personally investigating the various stories of outrage and mutilation which he received. It is the most astonishing thing that the British Government have given the Casement report so much credence. The agitation now going on with respect to atrocities in the Congo is based on things that happened a long time ago. There is no doubt that in times gone by atrocities have occurred; but, thanks to the altered methods and conditions of administration, such things are not likely to recur. The basin of the Congo, mainly the Belgian Congo, is practically the sole rubber-producing area of the world. This territory also contains the lowest class of natives in the whole of Africa. The natives all over the East Coast—the Masai, the Nandi, the Kaverondo, the Bukedi, the Baris, the Madis, the Dinkas, the Shiluks, and others—stretching right away up to the Soudan, are all a magnificent class of Negro, a fighting people, a manly, upstanding people, who impressed me immensely. I have been through parts of all their territories, and they are indeed a magnificent set of people. Then you get towards the West Coast—the basin of the Niger, where I was for nearly two years, and you see a lower class of natives. On the Benue, where the present punitive expedition is operating in Niaiger, you have again a distinctly lower class of natives. Then, as you go farther South, and get into the Congo watershed, you come upon a still lower class of natives. The natives over large areas in the Congo are cannibals to the present day. They are a very low class of native indeed. That is the territory which the Belgians have so successfully opened up for the rubber trade. In that opening-up process they have had, as I say, to contend with absolutely the lowest class of natives in Africa at the present day. As you travel through the Congo you cannot help feeling—at all events any one like myself, who has been through the British tropical colonies—that the amount of general advancement and civilisation in the Congo Free State is far ahead as compared with our own. This is doubtless owing to the fact that the Belgians have made the natives work. The Belgians have gone on the principle, to begin with, that the native must be a participating element in the development and civilisation of the country—that is, that he must work with and for the white man, and thereby benefit not only the white man but himself. I was immensely impressed with the state of government and the advancement and general opening-up of the Congo, the more so as I can compare it with other districts under British control in which I have been. We do not attempt to make the native work, with the result that we do not get the benefit we should from our Protectorates. Uganda and