whenever or whatever was desired. There had, unfortunately, been one or two accidents during elephant hunts, and antelope and hippopotamus hunting was therefore the only sport then allowed. My first experience of hippo-shooting, though in itself unnoteworthy, serves to illustrate the foolish things that ignorant men may do. I had camped on a sandbank near the head of Stanley Pool — a place, as I discovered to my cost, usually the camping-ground for natives.

On turning in for the night I found, in addition to the sand flies and mosquitoes, my tent so infested with vermin that sleep or rest was alike impossible. My Bangala canoe-men, who were huddled in groups enveloped with the thickest smoke they could make by putting damp grass on the fire, were no better off”, and the constant slap slap on their bare bodies