Could go over in a Bath chair.
The rest of it made you fit for one for the rest of your natural
life, for it was one mass of broken lava rock, and here and there
leviathan tree-stumps that had been partially blown up with
gunpowder.
When we near the forest end of the road, it comes on to rain
heavily, and I see a little house on the left-hand side, and a
European engineer superintending a group of very cheerful natives
felling timber. He most kindly invites me to take shelter, saying
it cannot rain as heavily as this for long. My men also announce a
desire for water, and so I sit down and chat with the engineer under
the shelter of his verandah, while the men go to the water-hole,
some twenty minutes off.
After learning much about the Congo Free State and other matters, I
presently see one of my men sitting right in the middle of the road
on a rock, totally unsheltered, and a feeling of shame comes over me
in the face of this black man's aquatic courage. Into the rain I
go, and off we start. I conscientiously attempt to keep dry, by
holding up an umbrella, knowing that though hopeless it is the
proper thing to do.
