CAMPAIGNS IN EASTERN AND CENTRAL AFRICA. 802 negro alliesin overwhelming numbers. Taken by surprise,some of Hodister's party werekilled on the spot. Others,less fortunate, were made prisoners, andcruelly tortured to death. Here, as in many other cases, the Arabs found ready allies in tlae natives, who had for many a year accepted them as their masters, and who had oftenbeen repelledrather than attracted by the methods of the white new-comers. There was another grim tragedy in October, when Emin Pasha (thenin the service of Germany),making a journey from the Victoria Nyanza into the Congo basin, was murdered in cold blood in Kibonge's country. His murderers werebrought to justice by theBelgians two years later. The men who killed him seem to have had no personal ill-will against him. They acted by order of their chief, and he gave tlae order because Emin was one of tlae doomed white have been the most horrible campaignof recent vears.

Even since thesuppression of the Arab revolt there has been a good deal of fighting in the Free State, for its methods of government are unhappily of a kind that must often provoke resistance. In the rubber-producing districts the Free State authorities insist on the officer in charge of each station sending down to Boma a certain amount of rubber every year. Many of the Belgian officials do not seem to be particular as to the means they employ to obtain it from the natives, and there are ugly stories current of exactions enforced by cold-blooded cruelty. The natural result is a condition of smouldering revolt in the districts thus misgoverned. On the borders of the state there are continualexpeditions against the savage and frequently cannibal tribes, whose raids are a standing danger to the stations and settlements of tlaeFree State. These little campaigns have often a tragic ending for the officers in charge of them. Thus,in January, 1899, Captain Bell, one of the few British officers in the Congo service, waskilledby cannibals in the Aruwimi country. The narrativeof the expedition given by oneof his colleagues may be quoted to give anidea of what campaigning in the Free State is like:— " men.

At the outset many of tlae smaller Belgian stations fell into tlae hands of the Arabs and their allies,and the position was further complicated by a Dervish raid into the eastern portion of the State. Baron Dhanis, the military governor, aided by a large staff chiefly of Belgian officers, but with a few of other nationalities,organised strong columns of regularly'drilled black troops,provided with machine guns and light artillery, and usually accompanied by a host of native irregulars, and so began the reconquest of the Upper Congo, which may be said to have been completedby 1895. The Arabs were driven steadily backwards,not without an occasional check ;their strongholds of Kasongo and Nyangwe were stormed and destroyed, and the effective occupation of the country was completed up to tlae shores of Tanganyika. The full story of tlae campaign has yet to be written; 70,000 men are said to have lost their lives in these three years of semi-savage warfare, in which the armies on both sides were largely composed of barbarians under their ownchiefs. Several cannibal tribes took part in the fighting, some of them on the side of the Congo State. Anofficer of the Free States forces has put on record the grim remark that the presence of cannibals with the army simplified the commissariat, and lightened the task of disposing of the slain. Another,telling the present writer the story of a defeat at which he was present,remarked that the white officers owed theirlives to thefact that the enemy were cannibals, who desisted from the pursuit " as soon as they had killedenough meat." It must "On January 18thlast Captain Bell, having been ordered down the river from his post at Yanabuya (a station on the Aruwimi some 1,500 miles in the interior) to Basoko (at the confluence of the Congo and Aruwimi), left the latter place on an expedition against certain Aruwimi tribes living four days' journey from the river. The expedition was commanded by Commandant van Wert, who was accompanied byLieutenantGiertsen (aScandinavian),Captain Bell, and 150 black troops. Its object was to prevent the tribes descending upon peaceful villages on the main Congo River. The force left Basokoin canoes on themorning of January iSth, and reached the Congo post of Bopamba the same night. There they left the river, and, after passing thenight at the station,struck into the bush. After twodays' march Commandant van Wert halted and dividedthe expeditioninto three sections, each of which consisted of fifty soldiers commanded by one of the white men. Lieutenant Giertsen,with his column, was sent in an easterly direction, and Captain Bell was despatched to the south with orders to scour the country, and then to returnto the commandant, who pitched his camp and remained where he