favour of Africa, one must admit that there is less now than there was ten years ago to deter Europeans from going to live there. The climate, certainly, is more injurious to them than that of their own country, but all tropical regions are terribly enervating to Europeans, and Central Africa labours under the added disadvantage of the great difficulty experienced in obtaining good food. A man who comes to the Congo must not shut his eyes to the fact that he is in a tropical climate, or try to live as he would in Europe. He must remember that the sun is far more powerful, and that, after having been for some months exposed to it, he is less able to resist the sudden changes of temperature to which he is sure to be subjected. As Stanley says, people think a great deal too much about malaria, and not enough about other causes of fever. When I first announced to my friends that I was going to the Congo," malaria" was dinned into my ears from morning till night, though no one seemed able to tell me precisely what it was-one man, indeed, saying he believed it was a kind of fever. During the first two years of my stay in the country, I had several slight fevers, and one or two bad ones; but not one of these can I attribute to malaria. The first attack was the worst. In the course of the ten days that followed it, my opinion of Africa went down to zero. Had Stanley been writing a prophecy concerning my arrival at the Pool, he

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could not have described it more exactly than when he says, speaking of Europeans on their way up country: "Some of them, under the fiery impulse of getting on, on, and on, will march their fifteen miles per day, and on arriving at the end of their journey, they will turn round and deliberately curse the land, the climate, and the people."

I started with a great notion of getting on, and walked, if not fifteen miles per day, at any rate more than I ought to have done, after lolling for six weeks about the decks of an ocean steamer. On arriving at the Pool, carried in a hammock, and with just enough sense about me to know that I was still alive, I did curse the country and the climate most heartily, and vowed that, if I ever regained strength enough to bear the journey down to the sea, I would get out of Africa as quickly as I could.

As soon as I was well enough, I took a walk to the top of Léopold Hill. Half-way down this height is a kind of terrace cut out of the hillside, on which the station buildings stand, whence a road leads down, through a banana-plantation, to the beach, and the stores and workshops necessary for the steamers. This hill was pretty steep, but the view at the top amply repaid the climb. It was one of the noblest I had ever seen. I could never do justice to it in a description, were I to try for a year; and even standing on the hill with it before my eyes, I felt as if I could not see enough of it.

Below me lay Léopoldville and the native town of Ntamo-I could look right over them to the baobabs marking the site of Nshassa-and beyond, the broad Pool, with its sandbanks and islands; while, to the north-east, the whitish gleam of Dover Cliffs showed plainly above the dark forest of Bamu (or Long Island); and a little to the east, a gap in the hills indicated where the Congo poured its volume of waters into the Pool. Turning to the south-east, the eye is arrested by Mabengu, lately christened Mense Mountain, in honour of Dr Mense, who ascended it just before leaving for home, which he did March 13th, 1887, to the great regret of all Europeans on the Congo. On the south side of the Pool, a broad grass-covered plain extends from Nshassa to Kimpopo, and back inland as far as the mountainridge of which Mabengu forms part. This plain, consisting of a rich black soil, will, I hope, in the dim future-when the long-talked-of railway is completed-be covered with plantations of coffee, rice, and sugar-cane. Some portions of it are inundated by the river during a rainy season of unusual severity; but the greater part is high and dry at all times, and only wants the grass cleared away to be ready for cultivation. To the west, the mighty Congo sweeps round the foot of Léopold Hill, and over the reef which forms the first rapid of Ntamo cataract. In the middle of the cataract are two or three rocky, tree-covered islets, between

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which the river roars in one mass of boiling foam. Just above the islands is seen one of the mouths of the Gordon-Bennett river, which, emerging from the dark forests of the north bank, flings itself headlong over a lofty cliff into the Congo. Eastward of the Gordon-Bennett, the high wooded bank extends to the village of Mfwa. Here, on a commanding height, the French tricolor waves from the station of Brazzaville, right opposite the rocky promontory, now called Kallina Point, after an Austrian lieutenant who, in 1883, lost his life while attempting to round it in a canoe. This point juts boldly out into the stream, its cliffs rising perpendicularly out of deep water, and diverts the strong current which dashes itself against its upper side, towards the centre of the river, thus forming, under the lee of the cliffs, a return current of almost equal strength. A new-comer ascending the river in a canoe, and keeping, as is always done, close inshore, would not see the broken water beyond the point till his craft was well under the influence of the return current, and being carried, at a speed of three or four miles per hour, right into an opposing current, running at the rate of six or seven. The sudden shock and lurch which follow are almost certain to upset the canoe; and then the best swimmer would need more than human strength to keep his head above the chaos of cross-currents and whirlpools which I reaway towards Ntamo falls. sweeps him

member, during my school-days, making a rash attempt at diving through the open sluice of one of the locks on the Medway. The river, not above twenty yards wide at the spot, was running, through a sluice of about two feet six by five feet, into a basin of say twelve feet broad and ten deep. Diving too low, I was caught in the return current, and whirled several times head over heels before I could struggle into calmer water, with a force such as I never wish to feel again. Compared with this trifling instance, what must be the force of current of a river which, after a course of nearly 3000 miles, throws, on an average, about 2,000,000 cubic feet of water out of the Pool, through a channel from one and a half to two miles wide, below which a sudden fall of ground forms the cataract of Ntamo? It is true that canoes can and do go up and down round Kallina Point, manned by experienced native boatmen; but even these are often thrown back several times before they contrive to cross the stream into the calmer bay beyond. Many a time, when rounding the point in the State steamer, have I seen the water thrown up, on either side of her bows, into a great wave, higher than the gunwale, as the plucky little launch charged the current-and wondered how any canoe could possibly live in that stream.

Such is Stanley Pool; and had it been situated in Europe, and blessed with a better climate, it would long ago have been as full of tourists raving