FROM IJUSSA TO THE SEA 487 members of that Company any more gratitude than I should the conductor of an omnibus in Paris when I have paid him my six sous.

The loading of the Ribago went on slowly, but at five o'clock we started ; the pipers of Major Testing came down to the quay and played the Marseillaise whilst the guns of the station fired a salute as, towed by the Ribago we left for Assaba.

Now for a couple of words about the Royal Niger Company. I will say nothing of the treaties or of the constitutive acts which preceded its formation, for I have not got to draw up an indictment against it. I will confine myself to quoting what Naval Lieutenant Agoult said on the subject — " The Company is but the screen behind which England hides herself."

To the great detriment of the shareholders, the Company tries to create an Empire, and in view of its acquisitions of territory, to make head against the revolts caused by its rapacity, it is obliged to maintain an army relatively large.

This necessity causes a mischievous friction between the military and civilian officers in the service of the Queen, they and the trading agents sometimes carrying their animosity to each other so far as to come to blows.

Then again the officers are anything but well treated by the Company. Like the agents, they are taxed and taxed again. Heaven only knows what an arduous profession theirs is. Carrol was always on the road, and Festing, when we saw him, was suffering horribly from a liver complaint. He had just returned from a twenty days' campaign against the villages in the bush on the left bank, and he was so tired he could not remain in the saddle. We were told of several officers having recently been killed by poisoned arrows, and of one who had died from eating poison in a village on the banks of the river.