238 FROM TANGANYIKA TO THE CONGO 



enormous population, of whom, it was commonly 

 reported, ten thousand possessed guns. The natural 

 result was that he had come to consider himself a 

 very great personage indeed, and quite justified in 

 bullying any European who came without force at 

 his back. I lodged a formal complaint against him 

 with the authorities, but he was an awkward person 

 for them to deal with, and I doubt if the Belgians 

 took any steps to lessen his power. In the mean- 

 time he, and people of his kind, are a common 

 danger ; at the time of my interview with him 

 Lusanghi was less than half sober, and it is quite 

 possible that in a fit of drunken madness he might 

 treat the next inoffensive traveller to the contents of 

 that prodigious gun, if he did not blow himself up in 

 the attempt. 



Our first glimpse of the Congo, or, to be more 

 accurate, the Lualaba, as it is called there, was of a 

 streak of grey water seen through a blinding storm 

 of rain — ugly enough, but it was a very welcome 

 sight. Though we were almost exactly in the 

 middle of the continent, and there were about 1,700 

 miles of river between us and the sea, it was for 

 us practically the end of our journey. Hence- 

 forward there would be no more stifling swamps, no 

 more elephant-grass, no more weary hills and valleys, 

 and, best of all, no more quarrelling porters. The 

 hour in which we paid off and said good-bye at 

 Kasongo to our last batch of porters was one of the 

 happiest of my life ; paddlers going downstream, 



