THE CONGO FREE STATE 265 



Congo dragon in impassioned sermons ; Bishops 

 and Lord Mayors appeal to the Foreign Secretary in 

 the name of humanity and philanthropy, and all of 

 them serve the purpose of the disappointed trader. 



Bordering on the Congo Free State is the Portu- 

 guese territory of Angola, a country about as large as 

 France and Switzerland and Italy combined. For 

 every thousand people who have heard of the Congo 

 it is possible that two have heard of Angola, and 

 perhaps one of those two knows that from a time 

 some score of years before the inauguration of the 

 Congo State, there has existed in that country a 

 system of slavery which is only comparable with 

 that of the Spaniards in the West Indies. Slaves 

 are brought down from the far interior, often as far 

 as 800 miles, by agents who think they have done 

 well if one-half of their drove survive the journey. 

 At the coast, knowing that it is impossible for them 

 to return home, the slaves bind themselves to a term 

 of service, which never ends, in the cocoa planta- 

 tions of the islands of S. Thome and Principe. 



My object in mentioning Angola is not to excuse 

 the faults of the Congo on the grounds of the 

 infinitely worse condition of things in Angola — a 

 great evil was never a justification of a less evil — 

 but to point out the disinterestedness (or otherwise) 

 of the Congo reformer. The great difference between 

 the two countries, though they are so close together, 

 is briefly this : Angola is a poor country, poor in 

 natural products of the soil and poor in minerals, 



