may be gathered from the fact that I have ridden through a single rice-field for an hour and a half. When placing groups of people about this country to form villages, these villages became self-supporting within three or four months.

Rice yielded two or three crops between the planting in October and the commencement of the dry season in May; and maize could often be eaten six or seven weeks after planting. Game had naturally been driven out of the neighbourhood — except on the Lualaba, where I often went on small shooting expeditions. All kinds of waterfowl and small game might be shot on the banks of the river in quantities — in greatest number during the wet season; though on the Lower Congo, Kasai, and other rivers the best shooting season is the dry (from May to October), when the sandbanks are