A CONGO POST i8i 



unless it is with the object of obtaining a good price 

 for it at some future time. 



During our enforced stay at Rutchuru we had 

 opportunities of observing the workings of a Congo 

 post. So far as they can, the Belgian officials try to 

 follow the ways of European barrack life. Stores 

 and provisions of every kind are supplied by the 

 Government, and all the officials, military and 

 civilian, mess together, except the Commandant — 

 a somewhat rare personage, only found in the more 

 important posts — who has a separate establishment. 

 The day is punctuated shrilly and discordantly by 

 bugle-calls. The Belgian army has (it would seem) 

 at least a thousand different bugle-calls, and the 

 black buglers are constantly trying to vary them or 

 add to their number. The office of bugler is one 

 that is much sought after, and the afternoon practis- 

 ing of four or five aspiring buglers is a thing the 

 very recollection of which makes one's blood run cold. 



Every black soldier keeps one, and very often 

 more than one, wife, and these women are required 

 to do a certain amount of work for the State — light 

 work, such as sweeping the roads and paths in 

 the post, or weeding in the garden, if there is one. 

 It may be objected by some people that the State 

 has no right to make the women work ; but in a 

 country where the women are accustomed to doing 

 the greater part of the work of the community under 

 the critical eye of their husbands, there is much to 

 be said for the system. It keeps them to a certain 



