At this juncture the Committee changed its name to the International Congo Association and redoubled its activities. The Niadi Kwilu Basin was explored; that important factor in late Congo prosperity, the Upper Kassai, was brought under the influence of Belgian regeneration, and the Lunda country and districts beyond were taken within the Government’s sphere. In five years discoveries of great value had been made in Darkest Africa, hundreds of tribes had been peacefully visited, over five hundred treaties of suzerainty had been made with the ruling chiefs, forty stations had been erected and their complement of officers put to the work of administering a definite system of local government, and five steamers on the Upper Congo were regularly communicating the affairs of a Government which now effectively controlled all the territory between the East Coast and Stanley Falls, between Bangala and Luluabourg.[2] This, then, was the position of the Government in the Congo Basin in 1883, long before the Berlin Conference. The status that Government acquired as a consequence of its administrative acts in, and dominion over, the territory it occupied, has been briefly indicated from the point of view of American authorities on the subject of international law. Before examining the leading European authorities, whose approaches to the subject are peculiar to European experience and learning, it is interesting to observe how consistently the action of the Government of the United States followed the American view of the law on the subject. [Sidenote: A Learned Belgian.] Baron A. Descamps’ _New Africa_, an excellent essay on government civilisation in new countries, embodies a concise statement of what occurred in the fortunes of the infant State early in 1884, when its progressive work had extended a civilising influence to those regions of the Congo Basin where the Arab slave trade had not retained its devastating sway. The writer says: