At Coquilhatville, as elsewhere in the State, the prisoners are given
useful work to do. Near by a party were digging a hole by the roadway.
They were chained together but the chain was so long that it did not
hamper their movements. Two policemen were on guard, but the whole gang
were evidently taking matters very easily.

In the evening we dine with the Commissaire and a party of sixteen or
eighteen, including many of our fellow travellers, Mr. Grenfell and Dr.
Button, of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, who is here
studying the Sleeping Sickness. Everyone we meet who has travelled in
other countries and also visited the Congo, is astonished at the
wonderful development of the place. It is indeed becoming more and more
apparent that the State has gone ahead very fast and that the stress has
been great, both for Europeans and natives. Probably, now the machine is
fairly set rolling, it will proceed more steadily in the future.

Next day we decide to leave the _Flandre_ and stay for a week or so at
Coquilhatville. Commandant Ankström, the Adjoint Superieur to the
Commissaire, kindly lends us his house and we at once move in, glad to
leave the mosquitoes of the river and to sleep in a room once more.
Everything in the house and garden is scrupulously clean and tidy,
characteristics which I may add were found in nearly every Post and
house in the whole country. The sanitary arrangements are the
perfection of simplicity. There are no drains, but simple receptables
which are emptied and cleaned every morning while carbolic acid is used
liberally. This admirable system is carried out in every Post, however
large or small, and I never once found it unobserved. The natives
themselves are also very cleanly in their habits, so that although the
heat is great and decomposition proceeds very rapidly, bad smells are
absolutely unknown. Near the residency is a well kept farm and the