mensity of earth, sky and water there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop would go one of the eight-inch guns, a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech-and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight, and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly that there was a camp of natives -he called them enemies-hidden out of sight somewhere.

"We gave her her letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying of fever at the rate of three a day), and went on. We called at some more places with farcical names where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere, as of an overheated catacomb; all along the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf, as if nature herself had tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters thickened into slime, invaded the contorted stems of mangroves that seemed to writhe at us in the extremity of an impotent despair. Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particularized impression, but the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.

"It was upward of thirty days before I saw the mouth of the big river. We anchored off the seat of the government; but my work would not begin till some 200 miles further on. So as soon as I could, I made a start for a place 30 miles higher up.

"I had my passage on a little seagoing steamer. Her captain was a Swede, and knowing me for a seaman, invited me on the bridge. He was a young man, lean, fair and morose, with

lanky hair and a shuffling gait. As we left the miserable little wharf he tossed his head contemptuously at the shore. 'Been living there?' he asked. I said yes. 'Fine lot these government chaps -are they not?' he went on, speaking English with great precision and considerable bitterness. 'It is funny what some people will do for a few francs a month. I wonder what becomes of that kind when it goes up country? I said to him I expected to see that soon. 'So-o-o!' he exclaimed. He shuffled athwart, keeping one eye ahead vigilantly. 'Don't be too sure,' he continued. "The other day I took up a man who hanged himself on the road. He was a Swede, too.' 'Hanged himself? Why, in God's name? I cried. He kept on looking out watchfully. 'Who knows? The sun was too much for him, or the country, perhaps.'

"At last we turned a bend. A rocky cliff appeared, mounds of turned-up earth by the shore, houses on a hill, others with gray roofs among a waste of excavations or hanging to the declivity. A continuous noise of rapids above hovered over this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot of people, mostly black and naked, moved about like ants. A jetty projected into the river. A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare. "There's your company's station,' said the Swede, pointing to three wooden barrack-like structures hanging on the rocky slope. 'I will send your things up. Four boxes, did you say? So. Farewell.'

"I came upon a boiler wallowing in the grass-then found a path leading up the hill. It turned aside for the boulders and also for an undersized railway truck lying there on its back with its wheels in the air. One was off. The thing looked as dead as the carcase of some animal. I came upon more pieces of decaying machinery, stacks of rusty nails. To the left a

clump of trees made a shady spot where dark things seemed to stir feebly. I blinked, the path was steep. A horn tooted to the right, and I saw the black people run. A heavy and dull detonation shook the ground, a puff of smoke came out of the cliff-and that was all -no change appeared on the face of the rock. They were building a railway. The cliff was not in the way of anything, but this objectless blasting was all the work going on.

"A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind wagged to and fro like tails. I could see every rib. The joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rythmically clinking. Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could, by no stretch of imagination, be called enemies. They were called criminals-and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from over the sea. All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily up hill. They passed me within six inches without a glance, with that complete deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with a button off, and, seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon on to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence,

white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a large, white, rascally grin and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.

"Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the left. My idea was to let that chain-gang get out of sight before I climbed the hill. You know I am not particularly tender. I've had to strike and fend off. I've had to resist and to attack sometimes-that's only one way of resisting-without counting the exact cost according to the demands of such sort of life as I had blundered into. I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire, but, by all the stars, these were strong, lusty, redeyed devils that swayed and drove men-men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles further. For a moment I stood appalled, as though by a warning. Finally, I descended the hill, obliquely, toward the trees I had seen.

"I avoided a vast artificial hole somebody had been digging on the slope, the purpose of which I found it impossible to divine. It wasn't a quarry or a sandpit, anyhow. It might have been connected with the philanthropic desire of giving the criminals something to do. I don't know. Then I nearly fell into a very narrow ravine, almost no more than a scar on the hillside. I discovered that a lot of imported drainage pipes for the settlement had been tumbled in there. There wasn't one that was not broken. It was a wanton

smashup. At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to stroll into the shade for a moment, but it seemed to me I had stepped into the gloomy circle of some inferno. The river was near, and an uninterrupted, uniform, headlong, rushing noise filled the mournful stillness of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a leaf moved, with a mysterious sound, as though the tearing pace of the launched earth had suddenly become audible.

"Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment and despair. Another mine on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn to die.

"They were dying slowly-it was very clear. They were not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the pomp of time contracts, lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air-and nearly as thin. I began to distinguish everywhere the gleam of eyes under the trees. Then glancing down I saw a face near my hand. The black bones reclined at full length, with one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, which died out slowly. The man seemed young-almost a boy-but you know with them it's hard to tell. I found nothing else to do but to offer

him one of my good Swede's ship biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers closed slowly on it and held-there was no other movement. He had tied a bit of white worsted round his neck. Why? Where did he pick it up? Was it a badge-an ornament-a charm-a propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all connected with it? It looked startling round his black neck, this bit of white thread from beyond the seas.

"Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing in an intolerable and appalling manner. His brother phantom rested his forehead as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about, others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror-struck, one of these creatures rose to his hands and knees and went off on all fours towards the river to drink. He lapped out of his hand, then sat up in the sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him, and, after a time, let his woolly head fall on his breastbone.

"I didn't want any more loitering in the shade, and I made haste towards the station. When near the buildings I met a white man in such an unexpected elegance of get-up that, in the first moment, I took him for a sort of vision. I saw a high, starched collar, white cuffs, a light alpaca jacket, snowy trousers, a clean necktie and varnished boots. No hat. Hair parted, brushed, oiled, under a green-lined parasol held in a big white hand. He was amazing, and had a penholder behind his ear.

"I shook hands with this miracle, and I learned he was the company's chief accountant, and that all the bookkeeping was done at this station. He had come out for a moment, he said, 'to get a breath of fresh air.' The expression sounded wonderfully odd with its suggestion of sedentary desk life.

I wouldn't have mentioned the fellow to you at all only it was from his lips that I first heard the name of the man who is so indissolubly connected with the memories of that time. Moreover, I respected the fellow. Yes, I respected his collars, his vast cuffs, his brushed hair. His appearance was certainly that of a hairdresser's dummy, but in the great demoralization of the land he kept up his appearance. That's backbone. His starched collars and got-up shirt fronts were achievements of character. He had been out nearly three years, and, later on, I could not help asking him how he managed to sport such linen. He had just the faintest blush, and said, modestly: 'I've been teaching one of the native women about the station. It was difficult. She had a distaste for the work.' Thus this man had verily accomplished something. And he was devoted to his books.

"Everything in the station was in a muddleheads, things, buildings. Strings of dusty niggers, with splay feet, arrived and departed; and a stream of manufactured goods, rubbishy cotton, heads and brass wire, set into the depths of darkness, and in return came a precious trickle of ivory.

"I had to wait in the station for 10 days-an eternity. I lived in a tent set up in the yard. To be out of the chaos, I would sometimes get into the accountant's office. It was built of horizontal planks, and so badly put together that, as he bent over his high desk, he was barred from neck to heels with narrow strips of sunlight. There was no need to open the big shutter to see. It was hot there, too. Big flies buzzed fiendishly, and did not sting, but stabbed. I sat generally on the floor, while, of faultless appearance (and even slightly scented), perching on a high stool, he wrote-he wrote. Sometimes he stood up for exercise. When a truckle-bed with a sick man

(some invalided agent from up-country) was put in there, he exhibited a gentle annoyance. "The groans of this sick person,' he said, 'distract my attention. And without that it is extremely difficult to guard against clerical errors in this climate.'

"One day he remarked, without lifting his head: 'In the interior you will, no doubt, meet Mr. Kurtz.' On my asking who Mr. Kurtz was, he said he was a first-class agent, and, seeing my disappointment at this information, he added, slowly, laying down his pen: 'He is a very remarkable person.' Further questions elicited from him that Mr. Kurtz was at present in charge of a trading post, a very important one, in the true ivory country at 'the very bottom of "there." Sends in as much ivory as all the others put together. He began to write again. The sick man was too ill to groan. The flies buzzed in great peace.

"Suddenly there was a growing murmur of voices and a great tramping of feet. A caravan had come in. A violent babble of uncouth sounds burst out on the other side of the planks. All the carriers were speaking together, and in the midst of the uproar the lamentable voice of the chief agent was heard 'giving it up' tearfully for the 20th time that day.... He rose slowly. 'What a frightful row,' he said. He crossed the room gently to look at the sick man, and, returning, said to me: 'He does not hear.' 'What! Dead?' I asked, startled. 'No. Not yet,' he answered, with great composure. Then, alluding with a toss of the head to the tumult in the station yard: 'When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages-hate them to the death.' He remained thoughtful for a moment. 'When you see Mr. Kurtz,' he went on, 'tell him from me that everything here' -he glanced at the desk-'is very satisfactory. I don't like to write to him

with those messengers of ours you never know who may get your letter at that central station.' He stared at me for a moment with his mild, bulging eyes. 'Oh, he will go far, very far,' he began again. 'He will be a somebody in the administration before long. They above the council in Europe, you know-mean him to be.'

"He turned to his work; the noise outBlackwood's Magazine.

side had ceased, and presently went out I stopped at the door. the steady buzz of flies the homewardbound agent was lying flushed and insensible; the other, bent over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions, and 50 feet below the doorstep I could see the still treetops of the grove of death."

Those who watch the literary firmament had begun to think that the stars of slum literature were set, never to rise again, when behold! new stars, one, two, and three, make their appearance in the heavens, all of them twinkling brightly, and, doubtless, the forerunners of many yet to come.

The truth is that it is no easy matter to say where any literary movement has its end, because it is always going on into fresh forms just as the public gets tired of the well-worn ones, and we recognize old friends with new faces at every turn. Books have, in fact, a very distinct evolutionary history in most cases, and sporadic appearances are infrequent in the world of letters.

Now, while it would show quite wicked pride to pretend to an exhaustive knowledge of Slum Literatureits appearance and its evolution-I have watched its later developments with so much attention that perhaps my observations upon these may have some interest for readers who have neither time nor inclination to cope with the scores of novels which represent the movement. It is no light thing to hear even the half that the novelists have to say upon any subject. I do not pretend to have heard

"I saw no reason, when I wrote this book," says the author of "Oliver Twist," "why the dregs of life should not serve the purpose of a moral as well as the froth and cream it seemed to me that to draw a knot of such associates in crime as really did exist, to paint them in all their deformity, in all their wretchedness, in all the squalid misery of their lives; to show them as they really were, forever skulking uneasily through the dirtiest paths of