method that within three or four months they became self-supporting, and later on supplied our whole forces with food.

At about an hour's march to the north of Kasongo, I found a splendidly rich country, with beautiful clearings in the forest and a good water supply. Traces of former villages abounded, and I should much have liked to raise up a thriving colony in so convenient a district. Two or three times I established villages, with invariably the same result: the whole population decamped, and either took up their abode elsewhere, or arrived in Kasongo clamouring to be placed in some other district. The leopards in their neighbourhood, they said, were so numerous, and so big and courageous, that any man going out of his hut after five in the evening or before seven in the morning was certain to be carried off by them.