and despoiled of its contents. Where in the evening there had been a pretty village, surrounded by a plantation like a covering of verdure, a gay and happy population, there is now a great black, empty spot; for on the completion of the sack the village had been set on fire and burned to the ground. Men, women, and children, tied together promiscuously, corpses strewing the ground, blood puddles emitting an acrid smell, and the assassins, horrible in their war paint, which during the struggle has run with their sweat and blood, complete the picture. Bound together in groups by stout cords around their waists and necks, the wretched procession of captives, often two or three thousand in number, was, after an incident such as this, marched to the coast. Generally, at least a third of them died by the way. The sick and the lamed, unable to maintain the desired pace, were weeded out at each halting-place and ruthlessly butchered by their captors. [Sidenote: A Herculean Task.] It will require no very inventive imagination to appreciate the magnitude of the difficulties confronting the Belgian pioneers in their effort to suppress slavery, carried on with such ferocious brutality over an area so vast as Central Africa. Yet that was but one of several tasks enjoined upon them by their King; but it was first in order and importance, and until it was accomplished little or no progress in other respects could be hoped for. “Crime is not punished as an offence against God, but as prejudicial to society,” says the historian Froude. King Leopold saw in the crime of slavery both the offence to God and the prejudice to man, and was prepared to exert his utmost energy and, if necessary, expend the last franc of his private fortune, to stamp out the evil. In this heroic endeavour his Majesty was ably seconded by his minister, the distinguished Baron Lambermont, who has recorded his opinion of slavery in these words: “The slave trade is the very denial of every law, of all social order. Man-hunting constitutes a crime of high treason against humanity. It ought to be repressed wherever it can be reached, on land as well as by sea.” [Illustration: Native Potters at Work (Aruwimi).] It is not claimed that there is anything original in the sentiment that animates this well-expressed sentence. Similar views to those of Baron Lambermont have been held by all great thinkers since the establishment of the Christian religion; but it is referred to in this place as an additional proof, if any were needed, of the high moral purpose underlying the enterprise of the King of the Belgians, and to show how that moral purpose was sympathised with and shared by his Majesty’s ministers and the Belgian people.