The ports ye shall not enter,

The roads ye shall not tread; Go, make them with your living, And mark them with your dead.

or the This may not be the last best word of modern Imperialism. It may be expecting too much of human nature, it might even be prejudicial to the best interests of the United Kingdom, as the centre and citadel of the Empire, to "bind our sons to exile" in Africa or in India. It is highly probable, to say the least, that the energies of "the best we breed" will be fully taxed with the domestic problems which will demand consideration when the present crisis has terminated. That, however, cannot be discussed here and now. Enough has been said to show that Kiplingism-more especially in its serious and religious aspects-is, like Imperialism itself, a natural stage in the evolution of the unprecedently protracted and marvellously diversified Victorian period.

Leisure Hour.

W. S.

III.

"Next day I left that station at last, with a caravan of 60 men, for a 200mile tramp.

"No use telling you much about that. Paths, paths, everywhere; a stamped in network of paths spreading over the empty lands, through long grass, through burnt grass, through thickets, down and up chilly ravines, up and down stony hills ablaze with heat; and a solitude, a solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had cleared out a long time ago. Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers, armed with all kinds of fearful weapons, suddenly took to travelling on the road between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left to carry heavy loads for them, I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very soon. Only here the dwellings were gone too. Still I passed through several abandoned villages. There's something pathetically childish in the ruins of grass walls. Day after day, with the stamp and shuffle of 60 pair of bare feet behind me, each pair under a 60-pound load. Camp, cook, sleep, strike camp, march. Now and then a carrier dead in harness, at rest in the long grass near the path, with an empty water gourd and his long staff lying by his side. A great silence around and above. Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking, swelling; a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive and wild -and perhaps with as respectable a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country. Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform, camping on * Copyright by S. S. McClure & Co.

the path with an armed escort of lank Zanzibaris, very hospitable and festive, not to say drunk, was looking after the up-keep of the road, he declared. Can't say I saw any road or any up-keep, unless the body of a middle-aged negro with a bullet hole in the forehead, upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles further on, may be considered as a permanent improvement. I had a white companion, too, not a bad chap, but rather too fleshy and with the exasperating habit of fainting on the hot hillsides miles away from the least bit of shade and water. Annoying, you know, to hold your own jacket like a parasol over a man's head while he is coming to. I couldn't help asking him once what he meant by coming into this country at all. "To make money, of course. What do you think,' he said scornfully. Then he got fever, and had to be carried in a hammock slung on a pole. As he weighed 16 stone I had no end of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the night-quite a mutiny. So one evening I made a speech in English with gestures, not one of which was lost to the 60 pairs of eyes before me, and the next morning I started the hammock off in front all right. An hour afterward I came upon the whole concern wrecked in a bush, man, hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy pole had skinned his poor nose. He was very anxious for me to kill somebody, but there wasn't the shadow of a carrier near. I remembered the old doctor. 'It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals on the spot.' I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.

However, all that is to no purpose. On the 15th day I came in sight of the big river again, and hobbled into the central station. It was on a back water surrounded by scrub and forest, with a pretty border of smelly mud on one side, and on the three others enclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A neglected gap was all the gate it had, and the first glance at the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running that show. White men with long staves in their hands appeared languidly from amongst the 'buildings, strolling up to take a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of them, a stout, excitable chap with black mustache, informed me with great volubility and many digressions, as soon as I told him who I was, that my steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck. What, how, why? O, it was 'all right.' The 'manager himself' was there. All quite correct. Everybody had 'behaved splendidly, splendidly!' 'You must,' he said, in agitation, 'go and see the general manager at once. He is waiting.'

"I did not see the real significance of that wreck at once. I fancy I see it now-but I am not sure-not at all. Certainly, the affair was too stupid, when I think of it, to be altogether natural. Still . . . at the moment it presented itself simply as a confounded nuisance. The steamer was sunk. They had started two days before in a sudden hurry up the river with the manager on board, in charge of some volunteer skipper, and before they had been out three hours they tore the bottom out of her on stones, and she sank near the south bank. I asked myself what I was to do there, now my boat was lost. As a matter of fact I had plenty to do in fishing my command out of the river. I had to set about it the very next day. That and the repairs, when I brought the

"My first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to sit down after my 20-mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in complexion, in feature, in manners and in voice. He was of middle size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as trenchant and heavy as an ax. But even at these times the rest of his person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only an indefinable faint expression of his lips, something stealthy -a smile-not a smile I remember it, but I can't explain. It was unconscious-this smile was, though just after he had said something it got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches like a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader, from his youth employed in these parts-nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it. Uneasiness! Not a definite mistrust-just uneasiness-nothing more-You have no idea how effective such a-a-faculty can be. He had no genius for organizing, for initiative. That was evident in such little things as the deplorable state of the station. He had no learning, no intelligence. His position had come to him-why? Perhaps because he was never ill. He had served three terms of three years out there. Because triumphant health, in the general rout of constitutions, is a kind of power in itself. When he went home on leave he rioted on a large scale, pompously. Jack ashore, with a difference in externals only. This, one could gather from his casual talk. He originated nothing; he could keep the routine going, that's

all. But he was great. He was great by this little thing that it was impossible to tell what could control such a man. He never gave that secret away. Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such a suspicion made one pause, for out there there were no external checks. Once when various tropical diseases had laid low almost every 'agent' in the station, he was heard to say: 'Men who come out here should have no entrails.' He sealed the utterance with that smile of his as though it had been a door opening onto a darkness he had in his keeping. You fancied you had seen things, but the seal was on. When annoyed at meal times by the constant quarrels of the white men about precedence, he ordered an immense round table to be made, for which a special house had to be built. This was the station's mess room. Where he sat was the first place; the rest were nowhere. One felt this to be his unalterable belief. He was neither civil nor uncivil. He was quiet. He allowed his 'boy,' an overfed young negro from the coast, to treat the white men, under his very eyes, with provoking insolence.

"He began to speak as soon as he saw me I had been very long on the road. He could not wait. Had to start without me. The up-river stations had to be relieved. There had been so many delays already that he did not know who was dead and who was alive, and how they got on-and so on, and so on. He paid no attention to what I said, and, playing with a stick of sealing wax, repeated several times that the situation was 'very grave, very grave.' There were rumors that a very important station was in jeopardy, and its chief, Mr. Kurtz, was ill. Hoped it was not true. Mr. Kurtz was I felt weary and irritable. Hang Kurtz, I thought. I interrupted him, saying I had heard of Mr. Kurtz on the coast. 'Ah! So they

talk of him down there,' he murmured to himself. Then he began again, assuring me Mr. Kurtz was the best agent he had, an exceptional man, of the greatest importance to the company; therefore I could understand his anxiety. He was, he said 'very, very uneasy.' Certainly he fidgeted on his chair a good deal, exclaimed 'Ah! Mr. Kurtz!' broke the stick of sealing wax, and seemed dumfounded by the accident. Next thing he wanted to know 'how long it would take me to-' I interrupted him again. Being hungry, you know, and kept on my feet, too, I was getting savage. 'How could I tell,' I said. 'I hadn't even seen the wreck yet. Some months, no doubt.' All this talk seemed to me so futile. 'Some months,' he repeated. 'Well, let us say three months before we can make a start. Yes. That ought to do the affair.' I flung out of his hut (he lived all alone in a clay hut with a sort of veranda), muttering to myself my opinion of him. He was a chattering idiot, plainly. Afterward I took it back when it was borne upon me startlingly with what extreme nicety he had estimated the time requisite for the 'affair.'

"I went to work the next day, turning, so to speak, my back on that station. In that way only, it seemed to me, I could keep my hold on the redeeming facts of life. Still, one must look about sometimes; and then I saw this station, these men strolling aimlessly about in the sunshine of the yard. I asked myself sometimes what it all meant? They wandered here and there with their absurd long staves in their hands like a lot of faithless pilgrims bewitched inside a fence. The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove! I've never seen anything so un

real in my life. And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.

"O, those months! Well, never mind. Various things happened. One evening a grass shed, full of calico cotton prints, beads, and I don't know what else, burst into a blaze so suddenly that you would have thought the earth had opened to let an avenging fire consume all that trash. I was smoking my pipe quietly by my dismantled steamer, and saw them all cutting capers in the light, with their arms lifted high, when the stout man with mustaches came tearing down to the river, a tin pail in his hand, assured me that everybody was 'behaving splendidly, splendidly,' dipped about a quart of water and tore back again. I noticed there was a hole in the bottom of his pail.

"I strolled up. There was no hurry. You see, the thing had gone off like a box of matches. It was hopeless from the very first. The flames had leaped high, driven everybody back, lighted up everything-and collapsed. The shed was already a heap of embers, glowing fiercely. A nigger was being beaten near by. They said he had caused the fire in some way. Be it as it may, he was screeching most horribly. I saw him later on for several days sitting in a bit of shade, looking very sick, and trying to recover himself. Afterward he arose and went out, and the wilderness, without a sound, took him into its bosom again. As I approached the glow from the dark, I found myself at the back of two men, talking. I heard the name of Kurtz pronounced, then the words, 'advantage of this unfortunate accident.' One of the men was the manager. I wished him good evening. 'Did you ever see anything like it-eh? he said. 'It is incredible!' and walked off. The other man remained. He was a

first-class agent, young, gentlemanly, a bit reserved, with a forked little beard and a hooked nose. He was stand-offish with the other agents, and they said he was the manager's spy upon them. I had hardly ever spoken to him before. We got into talk, and by and by we strolled away from the hissing ruins. Then he asked me to his room. It was in the main building of the station. He struck a match, and I perceived that this young aristocrat had not only a silver-mounted dressing case, but also a whole candle all to himself. (Just at that time the manager was the only man supposed to have any right to candles.) Native mats covered the clay wall; a collection of spears, assegais, shields, knives, hung up in trophies. The business intrusted to this fellow was the making of bricks-so I had been informed--but there wasn't a fragment of a brick anywhere in the station, and he had been there more than a year-waiting. It seems he could not make bricks without something; I don't know what-straw, may be. Any way, it could not be found there, and as it was not likely to be sent from Europe, it did not appear clear to me what he was waiting for. An act of special creation, perhaps. However, they were all waiting all the 16 or 20 pilgrims of them for something; and, upon my word, it did not seem an uncongenial occupation from the way they took it; though the only thing that ever came to them was disease-as far as I could see. They beguiled the time by backbiting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way. There was an air of plotting about that station, but nothing came of it, of course. It was as unreal as everything else, as the philanthropic pretense of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as their show of work. The only real feeling was a desire to get ⚫appointed to a trading port where ivory was to be got-so that they could get