I find that the natives are required to bring in four kilos of rubber every fortnight. They're supposed to be paid for it, and they do get brass rods or something of the sort; but the pay works out at the rate of three cents a pound--when rubber to my knowledge fetches about eighty cents a pound in the European market! I hear of cases where they don't even get that; a spoonful of salt is supposed to be sufficient. If the rubber don't measure up to the standard, the least punishment the poor wretches get is twenty-five lashes with a whip of hippo hide--the _chicotte_, an outrageous thing that would cut through a pine log. But they don't stop at twenty-five; a hundred ain't uncommon; no wonder some of the poor creatures peg out after it.
But that's not the worst. These precious "forest guards," as they call them, seem to be little less than fiends. I saw with my own eyes, at one of the villages on the way down, a basket filled with hands, cut from the people these savages have killed for not bringing in enough rubber. The Frenchman told me they have to produce these hands before the Commissary to prove they haven't wasted their cartridges. According to State law they oughtn't to be armed with rifles, but they've got a Belgian thing called the Albini, and that's how they use it. I wouldn't believe that this hand-chopping was done with the knowledge of the officials, though even then it don't relieve them of responsibility; but I heard of a State officer at one of the outposts who actually paid in brass rods for the hands brought him.
Law doesn't count here, and justice is only a name. What do you think of this? A Belgian official quartered himself with twenty native soldiers on a small village, and because they couldn't fix up at once the food required for the visitors, he carried the chief and some of his men to his camp up river, and kept 'em there tied up for a month till a fine of 5,000 brass rods had been paid--ruination for such a small place. The missionary told me that "fights" are constantly taking place, and "fight" simply means massacre. Districts that once held a thousand people are now reduced to a hundred; what natives are not killed get so worn out and dispirited that they are bowled over by sleeping sickness. If this sort of thing goes on much longer, the whole population will be wiped out.