to carry out the arduous task of tapping the rubber vines, gathering the flowing latex in calabashes, drying it, preparing it, reducing it generally to a marketable condition, and transporting it either by land or water, often for long distances; unless they received, as before, the value of their produce at current market rates. To be suddenly told that this labour must no longer be regarded as a voluntary act on their part, but was required of them, and would be periodically required of them; to be further told that its yield must be handed over as a "tax" or tribute; that they would get no value for the produce itself because their property in it was not recognised, and only such "payment" for their labour as the recipients of the "tax" might arbitrarily determine: this was tantamount to informing the native population inhabiting the part of the Congo which had been in trade relationship with Europeans, either directly or indirectly, from time immemorial, that it was in future to be robbed and enslaved. It refused to submit to the process. Nor could similar demands fail to meet with a similar resistance, where European trade had not penetrated. In every part of the Congo, the natives were perfectly well aware that ivory had an intrinsic value. In such parts of the Congo where the natives had not become acquainted with the fact that rubber was a marketable commodity, the people appear to have acquiesced, unwillingly enough, with the requisitions when first imposed, hoping that the white man would presently go away and leave them in peace. But when they saw that the white man was insatiable, that they could only carry out his orders by neglecting their farms and dislocating their whole social life, when they found men of strange tribes armed with guns permanently stationed in their villages, interfering with their women and usurping the position and functions of their own chiefs and elders—they, too, rose.
Evidence of the atrocious incidents which characterised the enforcement of the "system" would fill many volumes. The earliest in date, but not in time of publication, are in reports of the Belgian and other merchants from the main river, describing the period immediately following the edicts inaugurating the new "System." In less than twelve months the whole country was transformed. It was as though a tornado had torn across it and destroyed everything in its passage. But the effects
