234 FROM TANGANYIKA TO THE CONGO 



the natives — I never punished either of our ' boys,' 

 though they often enough deserved it — but I very 

 much deplore the existing system, the result of 

 which is that natives, whom you pay to work for 

 you, can drive you to the last pitch of desperation 

 by their laziness and insolence without your being 

 able to lay a finger on them, the only kind of punish- 

 ment which they appreciate. They are quite clever 

 enough to seek for trouble, and they know perfectly 

 well that they have only to run off and tell their tale 

 to the nearest judge, who will probably, as in my 

 case, give a better hearing to a black than to a 

 white man. 



Kabambare, where we spent a few days pending 

 Carruthers' recovery from his fever, is one of the 

 most hideous and forlorn places I have ever seen. 

 There are half a dozen houses and stores enclosing 

 a square space of bare mud, where the soldiers do 

 their daily drill ; the whole space is cut up by deep 

 channels to carry off the floods of water that fall in 

 the daily thunderstorms. A hundred yards outside 

 the post is a howling wilderness of bush and swamp. 

 There were two officials at Kabambare at that time, 

 and if they had not been constantly occupied with 

 the thousand and one reports and red-tape regula- 

 tions with which the Congo Government burdens 

 its servants, they must have died of depression. 

 The Chef de Poste, a Belgian, was a genial lieutenant 

 of a Line regiment, who had missed his proper 

 vocation by not becoming a market-gardener. He 



