198 THE SEMLIKI VALLEY 



mutilation? — which, as only a negro could, they had survived — had been 

 the work of the Manyema slave-trader and his gang, done sometimes out 

 of wanton cruelty, sometimes as a punishment for thieving or absconding. 

 Mav it not he that many of the mutilated people of whom we hear so 

 much in the northern and eastern part of the Congo Free State are also 

 the surviving results of Arab cruelty ? I am aware that it is customary 

 to attribute these outrages to the native soldiery and police employed by 

 the Belgians to maintain order or to collect taxes ; and though I am fully 

 aware that these native soldiers and police under imperfect Belgian 

 administration, as under imperfect British control, can commit all sorts- 

 of atrocities (as we know they did in ]\Iashonaland and in Uganda), every 

 bad deed of this description is not to be laid to their charge, for many 

 outrages are the work of the Arab traders and raiders in these countries,, 

 and of their apt pupils, the Manyema. This much I can speak of with 

 certainty and emphasis : that from the British frontier near Fort George 

 to the limit of my journeys into the ^Ibulia country of the Congo Free State^ 

 up and down the Semliki, the natives ap[)eared to be prosperous and 

 happy under the excellent administration of the late Lieutenant Meura 

 and his coadjutor, Mr. Karl Eriksson. The extent to which they were 

 building their villages and cultivating their plantations within the 

 precincts of Fort ^NFoeni showed that they, had no fear of the Belgians, 

 while the Dwarfs equally asserted the goodness of the local white men, 

 I am not prepared to defend the Congo Free State from its British or 

 foreign critics, any more than I am prepared to assert that the British 

 exploration and administration of Negro Africa has never been accompanied 

 by regrettable incidents. I can only state in common fairness that that 

 very small portion of the Congo Free State which I have seen since 

 these countries were administered by Belgian officials possessed excellent 

 buildings, well-made roads, and was inhabited by cheerful natives who 

 repeatedly and without solicitation on my part compared the good times 

 they were now having to the miseiy and terror which preceded them 

 when the Arabs and ]Manyema had estal)lished themselves in the country 

 as chiefs and slave-traders. 



We spent the remainder of the day at Lupanznla's, collecting information 

 from the natives about the okapi, and the next morning started for the 

 dense forest along a native patli. very different from the comfortable broad 

 road we had followed hitherto. The path was often a mere tunnel through 

 an oppressive mass of forest, pedestrians being hardly able to stand 

 upright, and the porters therefore finding it most difficult to carry their 

 loads. Occasionally we plunged into deep ravines, where there was a 

 sensation of relief owing to the lifting of leaves and branches to a great 

 height above us. Everything seemed exceedingly sodden and excessively 



