These two gentlemen called at my rooms, and, seeing my original map of the Congo hanging up, one of them, after a perusal of some of the notes written along the course, turned to me and asked— “How long do you think it will be before a white man revisits Stanley Falls?” “Two or three years, I suppose,” I replied. “Two or three years!” he exclaimed. “I expected you were going to say fifty years.” “Fifty years!” I cried. “Why, I will venture to wager that, before twenty years are over, there will not be a hundred square mile tract left to be explored in the entire Continent.” “Oh, come,” said the other gentleman, “that is too sanguine a view altogether. I will take your bet—shall we say £10?—and book it.” We booked it there and then. The twenty years have lately expired, but though I cannot claim to have won the wager, it must be admitted that my hasty prediction has closely approached fact. About the same time, Sir Rutherford Alcock, then President of the Royal Geographical Society, remarked, in his Annual Address, that I had told him that, with money enough, Africa could not only be explored, but civilised and converted into orderly states. It did not seem to me that there was anything surprising in that, but to Sir Rutherford it appeared worthy of public notice. It is of value here only as an indication of the general ignorance that then prevailed in all circles as regards Africa. Seven years later, after seeing the establishment of one of the African states that promised to be civilised some day, I was introduced by a Canon of Westminster Abbey to a well-known Bishop as one who had “done good work on the Congo.” “Oh, indeed!” said his Lordship, smilingly, “how very interesting; but,” he added, hesitatingly, “I am really not sure that I know where the Congo is.” As may be imagined, I was a picture of wide-eyed surprise. For every newspaper in the country had been for months daily publishing something or other about the Congo Conference, and I thought that surely one of the princes of the Church must have caught sight of the name; but such had been the Bishop’s culpable inattention to great events in Africa, that the name even had not attracted his notice. Resuming my proper subject, I became chief agent on the Congo. Every now and then during the six years that I occupied that position, directing the advance into the Congo basin, reports of our doings frequently reached England in one form or another, and still the trend of events seemed unperceived there, though there was considerable stir in Germany, France, Portugal, and Belgium.