all engaged in drilling men, sorting stores, and making up loads to last a caravan of four hundred men for a year.

No load was allowed to exceed forty pounds, which did away with the likelihood of delay on the road through the lagging behind of overloaded porters. On the 5th of July, just as we were ready to start, one of our most energetic men, named Smit, died suddenly, and two other men sickened with haematitic fever. This threw a gloom over the station, which arrested work for some days. It was during this time that the commissary of the district found that a regular human traffic was being carried on; the people on the upper river — the Basongo — themselves cannibals, being in the habit of selling slaves and children lower down the river to the Basongo Meno for food.